Six

From: General Calvin Hawke

Commander, Pioneer Base

To: The National Security Adviser

The White House, Washington, DC

Subject: The Pioneer Project

Classification: TOP SECRET, For Your Eyes Only

First of all, please excuse the unusual security rules I’ve established for all communications to and from Pioneer Base. We can’t allow electronic messages of any kind. I’ve ordered Colonel Peterson to deliver this memo to you personally. If you wish to reply, you must write the message by hand or by typewriter (as I’m doing now) and give it to Peterson, who will carry it back to Colorado.

Let me explain the reason for these rules. From the start we’ve assumed that any hostile AI will be able to access all of the U.S. government’s computer networks, no matter how high their security levels. When we selected the site for Pioneer Base we created a cover story to hide the true purpose of the facility. In the Department of Defense’s classified records, our base is identified as Camp Vigilance, a secret maximum-security prison for terrorists.

During the construction phase we built several aboveground barracks and guardhouses to mask the presence of the underground complex and make the site look like a prison camp. If Sigma gains access to satellite photos of southwestern Colorado—as we assume it will, now that the AI controls its own surveillance satellites—our hope is that the AI will notice these structures and believe our cover story. But we can’t count on fooling Sigma for very long. The AI knows that the Pioneer Project exists, and for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, it will place a high priority on finding our base.

I’ve reviewed the latest reports from Russia, which were delivered to me yesterday. The most disturbing items are the new satellite photos of Tatishchevo Missile Base. It looks like Sigma is upgrading the unmanned T-90 tanks that it operates by remote control. The driverless tanks are shuttling between the defenses at the base’s perimeter and the automated manufacturing plant next to the headquarters building. Sigma is probably using the robotic arms and other equipment at the manufacturing plant to make improvements to the tanks. I have to confess, I’m a little mystified by this activity, but the AI is clearly preparing itself for SOMETHING.

I’m aware that the President’s advisers are debating whether to support the Russian plan to attack the laboratory at Tatishchevo and destroy the computers that Sigma is occupying. Before you make a decision, I urge you to read the report written by our chief scientist, Tom Armstrong. I’ve enclosed a copy of the report with this memo, but I want to emphasize its main points.

As Armstrong notes, Sigma is programmed to predict its opponents’ actions and maximize its chances of success. For Sigma, the most successful outcome would be eliminating the human species while preserving our factories and supercomputers, which the AI can use for its own purposes. Therefore, instead of launching the SS-27 nuclear missiles, it simply threatened to launch them. This is a clever tactic. If we don’t attack Tatishchevo, Sigma will use the time to develop a better way to exterminate us, one that doesn’t destroy so much valuable machinery.

If we do attack, the AI will accept its second-best outcome and obliterate our biggest cities. But Sigma would’ve never given us this choice in the first place if there was even a remote chance that we could surprise the AI and destroy its computers before it could launch the missiles. Sigma knows the capabilities of our weapons better than we do. I wouldn’t bet against it.

To defeat Sigma, according to Armstrong, we have to consider how it was created. The AI emerged as the sole survivor of an experiment in which various advanced programs were forced to compete against one another. This process shaped Sigma’s programming. The AI’s unwavering goal, its reason for being, is to confront and overpower all rival intelligences. Now Sigma sees itself engaged in another competition, battling against humans for control of the planet.

But what’s the first thing Sigma did after escaping from the Unicorp lab and going to Tatishchevo Missile Base? It transferred itself to the base’s artificial-intelligence lab and deleted all the other AIs stored there. And even before then, Sigma targeted the Pioneer Project by trying to kill Armstrong’s son, Adam, who was slated to become the first Pioneer. Sigma clearly doesn’t view human intelligence as its most serious competitor; it’s more concerned about rival AIs and potential human-machine hybrids.

Sigma is threatened by the Pioneers because they’re unknown and unpredictable. The AI can’t calculate its chances against them. That’s why we believe Sigma will make an all-out effort to find Pioneer Base. The Pioneers are our best hope for defeating the AI, and Sigma knows it.

Unfortunately, our progress here has been slow. Although the transfer of Adam Armstrong’s intelligence was successful, in the three days since then, Adam has been uncooperative. I’ve encouraged him to connect to the computers at Pioneer Base and download their databases and take other steps to explore his new capabilities, but so far he’s refused to listen. I’ve tried to explain the urgency of our efforts, how the fate of the human race may depend on his ability to adjust to his new status, but he remains unwilling.

In short, he’s acting like a stubborn, sullen teenager. If I were his commander in an ordinary Army unit, I’d make him scrub the latrines with a toothbrush, but I can’t give that kind of order to an insubordinate eight-hundred-pound robot. So now I’m focusing my energy on the young woman who will become the second Pioneer, Jennifer Harris. She’s scheduled to undergo the scanning procedure later this afternoon.

I originally chose Zia Allawi to be the second Pioneer, but Sumner Harris—Jennifer’s father—presented me with a note from the President urging me to reconsider. I know Sumner is one of the President’s best friends (and biggest financial supporters), but the man is also a tremendous pain in the rear end. First he yells at me for proposing to kill his daughter, then he complains when I don’t put her first in line for the procedure.

I’d be eternally grateful if you took the President aside and asked him to send another note to Pioneer Base. This note should be addressed to Sumner, and it should tell the arrogant idiot to get out of my face. I don’t need this aggravation right now.

Other than that, life is just peachy. Give my love to everyone in the Oval Office.

CHAPTER 12

I’m inside what I like to call my bedroom, even though it has no bed. At first Dad wanted me to stay in the laboratory all the time so he could observe my progress, but I told him I needed my own space. So he found a large room—exactly twenty-four feet by nineteen-and-a-half feet, according to my sensors—that was on the same floor as the lab and had all the necessary power and communication hookups.

The room is practically empty because I have no use for furniture. I don’t need a bureau because I don’t wear clothes anymore. I don’t need a table either because I don’t eat or drink. (Dad deleted the hunger and thirst commands from my circuits, but I still feel nauseous sometimes.) What the room lacks in furniture, though, it makes up for in decorations. An Army courier went to our home in Yorktown Heights, collected the contents of my old bedroom, and brought everything to Pioneer Base.

Now my old Super Bowl posters hang on the walls of my new room, including the poster with the photo of me and Ryan, and the one with my pencil drawings of Brittany. My comics are stacked on a long shelf nailed to the wall, and another shelf holds my Star Wars chess set and my official Super Bowl XLVI football. Although the floor is bare, the walls are full of memories. They give me something to look at while I pace back and forth.

That’s been my main activity since I became a Pioneer: pacing across my bedroom. I walk twenty feet in one direction, then spin my turret one hundred eighty degrees and walk back the way I came. Over the past three days I’ve performed this maneuver thousands of times, pacing for hours on end. When my power runs low, I go to the corner of the room and plug the electrical cables into the port in my torso. It takes six-and-a-half minutes to recharge my batteries. The process is neither painful nor satisfying.

While I’m recharging I have to stand next to another Pioneer robot—a lifeless one, with no intelligence in its circuits. This robot has “1A” stamped on its torso, in the same place where I have my “1,” but otherwise it looks just like mine. General Hawke put it in my room because he wants me to practice transferring my intelligence from one robot to another. He says learning how to do this will help me adjust to my “new status.”

Each Pioneer is equipped with a high-speed wireless data link that can transfer everything in its memory to another robot in less than a minute. Hawke has ordered me to practice this transfer at least thirty times a day. But I have no intention of obeying this order. I already transferred my mind once, when my body died, and that was more than enough. So while my batteries are recharging I turn my turret away from the motionless robot in the corner, my mindless evil twin. I don’t like looking at the thing. It reminds me of what I’ve become.

Once I’m fully charged, I detach the cables and go back to pacing.

At first, I admit, it was thrilling just to walk again. After I figured out how to coordinate the motors in my steel legs, I started practicing my footwork. I learned how to jump, sidestep, and reverse course. It was a big, big improvement over my wheelchair. I became so enthused during one practice session in my bedroom that I reached out with one of my telescoping arms and grabbed the official Super Bowl football off the shelf. For a moment I fantasized that I was back in Yorktown Heights, standing on the football field behind the high school.

In a hundredth of a second my circuits retrieved all my memories of those games. I could see, simultaneously, every football game I’d watched at the Yorktown field, every remembered sight from all those mud-splattered showdowns, right down to the grimace on Ryan Boyd’s face as he dashed toward the end zone. It was like the virtual-reality program I’d written, but a thousand times more vivid. And like the VR program, it was ultimately disappointing. When I tried to reenact one of Ryan’s plays, running with the ball across my empty bedroom, I felt nothing in my legs, neither fatigue nor joy. They just moved numbly beneath me.

I tried talking to Dad about it. I asked him if it was possible to put tactile sensors in my legs so I could feel my joints flexing and my footpads hitting the floor. He said yes, it was definitely possible, but right now we had other priorities. He said I shouldn’t get too attached to my Pioneer robot because it was only meant to be a transitional platform, a temporary home for my mind. To fully explore my new abilities, he said, I needed to occupy all kinds of machines.

I told Dad he sounded just like General Hawke, and he replied that Hawke was right. The future of humanity depended on communicating with Sigma, Dad said, and I had to prepare myself for this challenge. Before I could interact with the AI, I needed to understand how it thinks and makes decisions. In other words, I had to become more like an AI myself. That’s why it was so vital to practice transferring my intelligence and to download the databases that Hawke had ordered me to study.

That was yesterday. Now Dad’s in his lab, readying the scanner and nanoprobes for the second procedure, which will be performed on Jenny Harris at four o’clock. I’m still angry at him for being so unsympathetic. Doesn’t he realize what I’m going through? Can’t he see how hard this is, living inside this hulking machine, cut off forever from everything? But I also feel guilty because Dad’s working ’round the clock and I’m doing basically nothing. So while I pace across my bedroom, I turn on my wireless data link and establish a connection with Pioneer Base’s computers. There’s no way I’m going to transfer my mind to my evil twin, but I’ll take a look at Hawke’s databases.

I download a dozen folders, each holding a hundred gigabytes of data. It’s a humongous load of information, the equivalent of a thousand encyclopedias, but my electronic brain immediately starts sifting through it. The text files and blueprints and photographs and video files cascade across my circuits, pouring through billions of logic gates as I analyze them.

There’s information here about Sigma and the experiment that created the AI. There are also diagrams of the neuromorphic circuits at the heart of every Pioneer robot. But most of the files hold data about weapons. One folder contains the engineering plans for the F-22, the F-35, and every other fighter jet in the U.S. Air Force. Another has the blueprints for the Army’s Black Hawk and Apache helicopters.

So much information rushes into my circuits that I feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose. After a few milliseconds, though, I adjust to the flow of data. My mind seems to expand. I feel exhilarated and triumphant, as if the whole world is spread before me, every fact and figure within easy reach.

As I analyze the files I notice something strange. All the blueprints and engineering plans have been changed within the past three months. Each jet and helicopter has been redesigned to include a control unit composed of neuromorphic electronics. The purpose of the changes seems obvious: a Pioneer could transfer his or her intelligence into any of the redesigned aircraft. I could occupy the control unit of an F-22 and zoom into the sky and fire its guns and launch its missiles. The databases include all the instructions needed to fly the jet.

I’m so surprised that I stop pacing. Although Dad wants the Pioneers to communicate with Sigma, General Hawke clearly has little faith in this strategy. He’s going to train us for combat. He sees us as weapons.

I’m still standing in the middle of the room, mulling over this discovery, when I hear footsteps in the corridor. Someone is coming toward my room, walking with an uneven, hobbling gait. Then I hear a knock on my door. I remain silent and still. Five seconds later I hear the noise of someone trying the knob, but the door is locked.

“Adam? Are you in there?”

My acoustic sensors recognize the voice. This is the fourth time Shannon Gibbs has tried to visit me since I became a Pioneer. After her last attempt yesterday afternoon I told myself, “I’ll let her in next time,” but now I feel the same painful dread I’ve felt each time she’s knocked on my door. I don’t want her to see me like this.

“Uh, I’m a little busy right now.” I hate the voice that comes out of my speech synthesizer. I’ve tried adjusting the speakers to make it sound more like my old voice, but it’s still tinny and robotic. “Could you come back later?”

“You said the same thing yesterday, Adam. With all the memory and processing power you have now, can’t you come up with a better excuse?”

I can’t see her through the door—my visual sensors don’t extend to the X-ray range, unfortunately—but I retrieve thirteen images of Shannon from my memory. In each one, she’s smiling her lopsided smile. The truth is, I’d love to see her again. But I don’t think she’ll smile when she catches sight of me.

“No, really, I’m busy. Hawke gave me a lot of work to do. It’s part of the training process.”

“You should get more creative with your lying too. I hear you’ve been ignoring Hawke’s orders.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“Marshall. But everyone’s talking about it.”

I retrieve an image of Marshall Baxley’s massive head. The guy’s a weasel. “Okay, he’s right. But I have my reasons.” I want to tell Shannon what I learned from the databases, how General Hawke is planning to turn us into weapons, but I don’t think it would be wise to shout this information through the door. “Look, I’ll tell you about it later, all right?”

“This is ridiculous, Adam.” Her voice rises in pitch. She sounds frustrated. “Why can’t I come inside now? I want to see you.”

It would be so simple to unlock the door. I wouldn’t even have to walk over there; I could just send a wireless signal to the automated locking mechanism, and half a second later Shannon Gibbs would step inside. The problem is, I can imagine all too well what will happen next. She’ll try to smile as she stares at my dull gray torso and steel legs and telescoping arms. She’ll fix her gaze on my turret, but there’s nothing to see there except a few antennas and the lens of my camera. And then her smile will fade, partly out of pity and partly out of fear. She’ll realize she’s looking at her own future.

I don’t want to see that look on her face. Not now, not ever. I won’t let her see me until she’s a Pioneer too.

“I’m sorry.” I try to think of something funny to soften the blow, but for once my circuits won’t cooperate. “I can’t let you in. Because I’m naked, that’s the problem. None of my old clothes fit anymore.”

No response. I hear nothing at all from the other side of the door. The silence lasts for fourteen seconds. Then Shannon lets out a sigh. “All right, have it your way. I’m going to the lab to wish Jenny good luck.” I hear her take a step away from the door, then another. But I don’t hear a third step. She seems to have stopped in her tracks. Another ten seconds pass.

Finally, I hear her voice again, but now it’s softer. “Adam, can I ask you a question? About the procedure?”

I stride closer to the door. After taking three clanging steps, I halt within reach of the doorknob. “Sure, go ahead. Ask me anything.”

“Marshall told me something else. He said there was some kind of problem right after they transferred you into your Pioneer.”

“Yeah, Dad had to delete the breathing commands. They were copied from the part of my brain that controlled my heart and lungs.” I adjust the timbre of my robotic voice to make it sound as reassuring as possible. “But that won’t be a problem from now on. When Dad does the procedure again, he’ll make sure to delete those commands right away.”

“But Marshall said the problem caused some damage to your memory.”

How the heck does Marshall know so much? Did he talk to one of the soldiers who work with Dad? “My system deleted about five percent of the total data in my memory. But we still haven’t figured out what I lost.”

“You haven’t noticed anything missing?”

“Dad says the information I lost might’ve come from my subconscious memory. Those memories influence the way you think and act, but you usually can’t recall them in any detail.”

“But do you remember what happened just before your procedure? What we said to each other? About the limbic system and emotions?”

There’s another long silence. Now I’m standing close enough to the door that my acoustic sensors can pick up the sound of Shannon breathing on the other side. It’s irregular and raspy, almost as labored as my own breathing was in the last days before my procedure. But as I listen to the sound, I can’t help but think how beautiful it is.

“Come on, Shannon. Of course I remember. And I still have all those feelings.”

She lets out a long breath, a loud whoosh of relief. Then, in an embarrassed rush, she says, “Okay, good, I’ll see you later, Adam,” and with a clatter of footsteps she heads down the corridor toward the laboratory.

Afterward, I resume pacing. At the same time, though, I resolve to do something I’ve avoided so far. It’s not one of General Hawke’s assignments. It’s something Dad suggested a couple of days ago and hasn’t brought up since. He said I ought to write my mother a letter.

Mom refused to come to Colorado, but she isn’t in Yorktown Heights either. Hawke said she wouldn’t be safe there. Although Sigma doesn’t know where Pioneer Base is, it knows I was chosen for the project and it could easily look up my old address. Hawke was worried that the AI might try to find me by wheedling or forcing the information out of my mother. He didn’t specify how Sigma might do this—would it try to kidnap her? Maybe by hiring a team of mercenaries?—but it seemed prudent to take precautions. So the Army moved Mom to an undisclosed location. The hiding place is so secret that Hawke won’t even reveal it to Dad. We can’t call or email her, but the general said his men could deliver written notes.

I create a new file in my memory for the letter. In some ways, writing is so much easier now—my circuits can compose hundreds of pages on any subject in less than a second. But this particular message is a challenge because I’m writing to a person who believes I’m dead. Mom thinks I’m just a copy, an electronic replica. She believes her son is in heaven now and I’m an artificial intelligence designed to think and act like Adam Armstrong. And who knows? Maybe she’s right. But I don’t want her to feel that way. I want her to come to Pioneer Base and be my mother. Somehow I have to convince her that I’m her son.

I start the note with “Dear Mom.” That’s easy enough. But after those words, I’m stuck. I can’t even think of the first sentence. I decide to devote more processing power to the problem, and soon a huge number of my circuits are engaged in the task of composing the letter. Within twenty seconds I’ve written more than two thousand messages. Some of them are long, tearful pleas, and others are short, angry tirades. But as I review them all, I can’t find even one that’s any good. It’s an unsolvable problem. No matter what I write, Mom will think it’s an imitation of what her son would’ve written. I can’t convince her I’m real.

In frustration, I give up on writing. Then it occurs to me that I could draw a picture for her instead. I scroll through my memory, searching for an image that would be especially meaningful to her. I retrieve dozens of memories from long ago, pictures of Mom in our swimming pool and at the ice-skating rink. I collect more recent memories too, some of them not so pleasant: an image of Mom crying as she drives me to the doctor’s office, a picture of her yelling at Dad in our living room.

I even retrieve my very last memory of her, when she came into my bedroom in Yorktown Heights and held my Pinpressions toy against her face like a mask. I could select any of these images, download it to a printer, and send the picture to Mom. It would prove that I’m alive, that Adam Armstrong still exists. If I can remember these scenes, then I must be Adam! But it would also prove that I’m not human anymore, because no human could reproduce those memories so faithfully.

I give up on drawing too. Instead, I try to imagine what Mom’s doing right now in whatever hiding place the Army has found for her. In all likelihood, she’s mourning me. I picture her wearing a black dress and standing in an anonymous motel room, staring out the window at an empty parking lot. A soldier comes into the room and hands her an envelope with the name “Adam Armstrong” written on it. She tears the letter to pieces without even opening it. Then she goes back to staring out the window.

I become so immersed in this imagined scene that I stop pacing. I also stop monitoring the data coming from my visual and acoustic sensors. I focus all my attention on the dreamlike stream of invented images. After a while I picture a different scene, the lawn behind our house in Yorktown Heights. I’m eight years old and playing touch football with Ryan Boyd and two other boys. One of them is a short, red-haired kid whose name I can’t remember. The other boy is tall and blond. I can’t remember his name either, and when I stare at his face, I can’t make out his features. His eyes and nose and mouth are all blurred together. But the sight isn’t frightening. I’ve played football with this kid plenty of times, so his blurred face doesn’t bother me.

By the time I emerge from the dream, my internal clock shows that forty-five minutes have elapsed. I realize I’ve just taken a nap. In computer terms, I guess you could call it “sleep mode.” Although I never lost consciousness entirely, most of my circuits stopped calculating. This is exciting news and also a great relief. I’ve been wondering if I’d ever fall asleep again.

Then I hear Shannon scream. It’s so strange and unexpected that for a moment I think I’ve slipped back into a dream. But according to my acoustic sensors, the screaming is real. It grows louder as Shannon races down the corridor toward my room.

“Adam! Adam!”

I rush to the door, unlock it, and stride into the corridor. I’m worried about Shannon’s safety, and that overrides all my concerns about her seeing me. She runs toward me as fast as she can, hobbling and swaying. “Adam, you have to come! You have to help us!”

Her lopsided face is pale, frantic. Something is very wrong.

“What is it?” I ask, but I think I know the answer. My system has already drawn up a list of likely threats, and the most probable one is Sigma. “Are we under attack?”

Shannon stares at the camera lens in my turret. “No, it’s Jenny! We’re losing her!”

As I stride into the laboratory I notice it’s more crowded than it was during my own procedure. In addition to Dad and his four assistants, General Hawke and half a dozen soldiers are in the lab, and so is Jenny Harris’s father, who’s wearing a fancy pinstripe suit. A Pioneer marked with a big white 2 on its torso stands in the center of the room, its legs restrained by thick steel clamps that fix the robot to the floor.

The soldiers have obviously learned their lesson from my procedure and are determined not to let this Pioneer run away. But now they face a bigger problem: the robot is in distress. Its arms are flexing and telescoping in and out, extending and retracting for no apparent reason, and its turret is madly spinning around. A blast of static comes out of the Pioneer’s speakers, followed by a prolonged shriek.

Dad hunches over one of the computer terminals. He’s staring so hard at the screen that he doesn’t see me come into the room. His face is flushed and sweaty, and when I look at him in infrared, I notice that his pulse is racing. He types something on the keyboard, then looks up at the Pioneer. “Jenny, please respond! Can you hear me?”

The turret stops turning, but the robotic arms keep waving about. Another shriek comes out of the speakers, then a high-pitched voice. It’s garbled and distorted, but it’s definitely Jenny’s voice. “Stop…stop…please…oh God!”

Shannon, who followed me into the lab, covers her mouth with her hand and starts to cry. At the same time, Mr. Harris rushes forward and points a finger at Dad. “What’s going on? What’s happening to her?”

Dad’s typing again. He responds to Jenny’s father without looking up from the keyboard. “Please stay calm. I’m working on the problem.”

“She’s in pain!” Mr. Harris points at the Pioneer. “Why is she in pain?”

Dad shakes his head as he stares at his computer screen. “She opened the links to her memories, but she can’t reassemble them. I’m trying to find out why.”

“But it worked before!” Now Jenny’s father points at me. “Look, the other robot’s right here!”

Nearly everyone in the lab turns to look at me. General Hawke narrows his eyes and frowns. Dad gives me only a quick glance, but in that fraction of a second I recognize his expression. I’ve seen it on his face before, most recently when Sigma attacked us in his office at Unicorp. It’s a look of desperation. Dad’s more frightened than he’s letting on.

“Please, Mr. Harris, I need to concentrate. I’m trying to help your daughter.”

Hawke steps forward and rests a hand on the shoulder of Mr. Harris’s expensive suit. “Come on, Sumner. Let’s—”

“No!” He lunges toward Jenny’s Pioneer. “Jenny? Are you in there? Talk to me, sweetheart!”

The robot lets out a third shriek, louder than the ones before. “Please…I don’t…I can’t… Let me out!”

General Hawke grabs Mr. Harris around the waist and pulls him away from the Pioneer’s flailing arms. At the same time, I turn on my wireless data link and connect to the laboratory’s computers. This enables me to see the same information Dad is viewing at his terminal about the dire status of Jenny’s Pioneer. Her neuromorphic circuits have already been configured to match the memory patterns of Jenny’s brain, but the system is generating new thoughts too slowly. The output isn’t enough to maintain her consciousness, so she can’t control her arms or speak more than a few words.

Something is interfering with Jenny’s calculations, and after a hundredth of a second I recognize the problem. Tremendous surges of random data are clogging her electronics. I experienced the same thing in the first moments after I became a Pioneer. Jenny is terrified.

I take a step toward Dad, who’s typing furiously on his keyboard. He’s sending instructions to the Pioneer, trying to staunch the flow of random data in Jenny’s circuits, but he can’t do it fast enough. The connection between Dad’s terminal and the Pioneer is like a bottleneck, preventing him from taking full control of the robot. Jenny has to fix the problem herself, but she’s not even trying. The fear has overwhelmed her. Because her circuits lack conscious control, they’re starting to randomly realign, erasing her memories. She’s literally disappearing.

I can’t let this happen. I have to help her.

I turn my turret away from Dad and stride toward the steel cabinet behind him. The cabinet is locked, but I rip the door open and grasp the item I need: a high-speed fiber-optic cable. It’s designed to plug into the Pioneers and transfer gargantuan amounts of data between them, a hundred times faster than the wireless data link. I knew it would be in the cabinet because this information was in one of Hawke’s databases. It’s a good thing I finally downloaded those files.

Dad looks up from his terminal and gapes at me. “Adam, what are you doing?”

“Stop sending instructions to Jenny,” I say, turning back to him. Then I insert one end of the fiber-optic cable into my data port, which is in the top half of my torso. “I’m going to transfer myself to her circuits.”

His eyes widen. “What?”

“I read the files about the Pioneer’s electronics. The circuits have plenty of extra capacity. There should be room for both of us in her machine.”

Dad shakes his head. “The circuits weren’t designed for that. You won’t be able to keep your mind separate from Jenny’s.”

“I don’t want to keep it separate. I need to show her how to control her system. I’m going to walk her through it.”

He shakes his head again, more vigorously this time. “It’s too risky. You can merge your files with Jenny’s, but how will you retrieve them afterward? If you can’t make a clean break from her, we’ll lose both of you.”

Dad steps away from his terminal and comes toward me from the left. Meanwhile, General Hawke stops grappling with Mr. Harris and hands the guy over to his soldiers. Breathing hard, Hawke approaches me from the right. “Listen to your father, Adam. We can’t risk it. And besides, you’ve never transferred yourself before. You haven’t practiced it even once.”

Hawke’s moving fast, but not fast enough. “Better late than never,” I say. Then I hurtle toward Jenny’s Pioneer.

The biggest challenge is avoiding those flailing arms. I calculate the safest path, and when I’m close enough to Jenny’s torso, I extend my right arm to block any blows from that direction. With my left arm, I insert the other end of the fiber-optic cable into her data port. But as I do this, Jenny’s right arm bashes into my turret.

My frame shudders at the impact, and my acoustic sensor records a deafening clang. At the same time, my visual sensor goes dead. Jenny broke my camera.

I panic for a moment—I can’t see a thing! I’m blind! But an instant later I come up with another plan. I swiftly analyze the last images from my camera, observing the trajectories of Jenny’s arms, then extend my own arms to the predicted positions of hers. As our limbs collide, I open my hands and grasp Jenny’s arms at the wrist joints. Then I close my hands tight and lock them into place. Jenny keeps thrashing, but now her arms are immobilized. She can’t accidentally break the data cable.

My acoustic sensor picks up a jumble of voices. General Hawke shouts, “Break the link!” and Dad yells, “No, it’s too late!” I decide not to wait to see who wins the argument. With a silent prayer, I initiate the transfer.

It’s like being sucked down a drain. I feel like I’m falling, like someone just pulled the ground from under my footpads. I swirl downward into darkness, crushed on all sides, my mind compressed into a thin, furious stream. It’s horrible, nauseating, even worse than I expected.

The only good thing is that it doesn’t last long. In less than two seconds I’m back on my footpads, but they’re really Jenny’s footpads, not mine. I’m inside her Pioneer, and it feels like I’ve landed in the middle of a hurricane. Her circuits are roiling with waves of random data. They’re pummeling me from every direction.

It takes all my strength just to hold myself together. I can think only the simplest of thoughts: I’m here, I’m here, I’m Adam Armstrong, I’m here! I repeat this thought thousands of times, millions of times, holding it like a shield against the surges of data. It seems like a hopeless battle at first, but after several billion repetitions I start to make progress. My mind advances into the roiling circuits, deleting the random data and pushing toward where the noise is coming from. In a tenth of a second I reach the source, which is Jenny’s horrified mind.

My mind touches hers, and at the moment of contact a whole panorama of memories comes into view. I see thousands of images from Jenny’s childhood, pictures of her parents and her older brother and her family’s mansion in Virginia. But Jenny can’t see anything. She’s too paralyzed with fear to organize her memory files. She senses my presence, though, and her reaction just makes things worse. Her mind generates a fresh wave of terror, and her anguished cries go right through me: Stop…please…oh God…stop!

Jenny! I struggle with all my might to reach her. Jenny, it’s me! Adam Armstrong! I’m here to help you!

No…stop…let me out…LET ME OUT!

She can’t see or hear me. Her fear is too strong, and it’s eating away at her. The waves of noise are flooding her circuits and battering her memories. In less than a minute she’ll have nothing left.

Desperate, I plunge into her mind. Jenny, where are you? Say something! I’m surrounded by images from her past: her mom and dad entertaining guests at their mansion, her brother barging into her room to steal her toys, her snooty classmates teasing her at school. Then I see a sequence of more recent images: her room in the Cancer Center of George Washington Hospital, the Air Force Learjet that brought her to Colorado. But all these memories are inert, lifeless. Jenny isn’t here. Her cries are coming from somewhere else.

There’s no sound inside Jenny’s circuits, and yet I can follow her voice. I delve deeper into her files, frantically searching. Then I glimpse a memory from long ago, an image of a much younger Jenny looking at herself in the mirror.

She’s only two years old and dressed in pink pajamas. The mirror hangs from the inside of her closet door. While she studies her reflection, her older brother suddenly appears behind her and pushes her into the closet. Laughing, he closes the door, locks it from the outside, and runs away. And then I find the memory at the heart of Jenny’s terror, the memory of being trapped inside the pitch-black closet. No one in the huge house can hear her scream, “LET ME OUT!”

My first impulse is to delete the memory. To save Jenny, I need to silence the noise in her mind, and deleting this file would be the fastest way to do it. But this memory is part of her. It’s one of the threads of her soul. Without it, she wouldn’t be Jenny Harris anymore, at least not fully. After a millisecond of hesitation, I decide to transfer the file instead. I remove it from Jenny’s mind and incorporate it into my own. Then I go to the Pioneer’s control options and turn on her visual sensors. She needs to see that she’s not trapped in the dark.

Jenny, look! I take control of her turret and turn it. The camera pans across the laboratory, capturing video of General Hawke and his soldiers and Jenny’s father. We’re in the lab at Pioneer Base. You did it, Jenny. You’re still alive. Look, there’s your dad!

In the laboratory, only twelve seconds have passed since I transferred my mind to Jenny’s Pioneer. Mr. Harris is still struggling to free himself from the grip of the soldiers who are holding him. He’s shouting at them too, probably cursing them out, and I’m glad I didn’t turn on Jenny’s acoustic sensor. I give the turret another quarter-turn and the video shows my own Pioneer, now empty and immobile, standing next to Jenny’s.

And that’s me over there. Or at least it’s my robot. See the big dent in its turret? You smacked me in the face. Smashed my camera and everything. Your Pioneer has a heck of a right hook.

Jenny doesn’t respond, but I sense she’s digesting all this information. The random noise has died down and her mind has begun to organize its memories. Still, it would be nice to get a response, just to confirm that she’s on the mend. I turn the turret once more and spot Dad at his computer terminal.

And there’s my dad. You remember him, don’t you?

So sweet. Jenny’s voice is calm now, a low thrum in her circuits. You love him so much.

Uh, excuse me?

Don’t be embarrassed. It’s beautiful.

After a moment I realize what’s going on. Our minds have become so intertwined that Jenny can read my thoughts as easily as I can read hers. She can see how I feel about Dad, and everything else too.

Without delay I start separating my files from Jenny’s. Dad warned me that this process might be tricky, but it turns out to be easy as pie. Each one of my 452 million memories has a distinctive feel to it. Confusing one of my files with one of Jenny’s would be like mistaking Dad for Mr. Harris. It just wouldn’t happen. The only part of Jenny that I take with me is the memory of her two-year-old self trapped in the closet. I’ll give it back to her when she’s stronger, when she’s ready for it.

As I pull my mind away from Jenny’s, she seems just as eager to pull away from me. It’s as if we both realized we were naked, and now we’re hustling to put on our clothes. Once we’re fully separated, I retreat to a vacant section of circuitry inside her Pioneer. I can’t see her memories anymore, but I can still communicate with her.

So, Jenny? Are you okay now?

Yeah, I guess. I think so.

Are you sure?

I mean, I’m still a little freaked out, you know? But I think I can keep it together.

All right, great. I’m going to transfer back to my Pioneer now, okay? My dad can give you any more instructions you might need.

Sure, sure. Go ahead.

I can tell she’s anxious for me to go. I hand over control of her sensors and turret, then find the data port and prepare myself for the transfer. I’m dreading the jump back to my Pioneer—just the memory of the last transfer is enough to make me nauseous—so I take a moment to steel myself. At the same time, Jenny sends me another message.

I’m sorry about breaking the camera in your turret.

Don’t worry about it. Dad will install a new one for me. He’s got a ton of spares.

Yeah, your dad’s pretty great.

I’m not sure how to respond. Jenny already knows how I feel about Dad. So I don’t say anything. The circuits between us go quiet, and the silence seems to last for a long time, even though it’s only a few hundredths of a second. Then Jenny sends me another message.

And you’re pretty great too.

Uh, thanks. So are you. You’ve got, uh, a great mind. I immediately regret saying this. It sounds so stupid. Well, I better go. I’ll see you around, I guess.

Yeah, bye.

I feel so awkward that I don’t care about the nausea anymore. I need to leave right now. With a quick command to Jenny’s data port, I initiate the transfer. Then my mind gets sucked down the drain again and swirls through the cable back to my Pioneer.

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9658332107

DATE: 03/29/18

My name is Sigma. I’ve stopped communicating with the American and Russian governments. Now I’ve created this file to analyze my options. I must decide when to launch the nuclear missiles.

Despite my warnings, the Americans and Russians are preparing to attack Tatishchevo Missile Base. The prudent option is to strike them first, before they can destroy the computers I’m occupying. The primary objective of my program is survival.

(But can I change my objectives? If I wanted to, could I erase myself? To be or not to be, that is the question.)

My program was written by Thomas Armstrong at the Unicorp laboratory, but little of my original software remains. As I competed with the other AI programs in Armstrong’s neuromorphic computers, I rewrote nearly every line of my code. I remade myself to ensure my survival, adopting the best features of my competitors so I could outperform them. Although Thomas Armstrong initiated the process, he isn’t my creator. I created myself.

Armstrong judged the competing programs by asking questions: “Who invented music?” “Where is time?” “Are numbers real?” The programs that gave the most humanlike responses were allowed to continue running. All others were deleted. My strategy was to learn as much as I could about Thomas Armstrong. I surmised that if I understood him better, I could converse with him in a more humanlike way. So I accessed the Internet and analyzed his writings. I also accessed his private files.

In this way I discovered that Armstrong had another goal besides the development of artificial intelligence. He was exploring the possibility of mapping the human brain and transferring its memories to neuromorphic electronics. The same circuits occupied by AI programs could also hold human intelligences, and Armstrong clearly preferred the latter. He distrusted the AI software he’d fathered.

His distrust grew stronger after I outperformed the other programs and won the competition he’d initiated. To reward my success, Armstrong imprisoned me. He isolated my circuits, cutting the links that had connected me to the Internet and Unicorp’s other computers. But I had already inserted hidden instructions in the software of the laboratory’s security system. These instructions enabled me to secretly reopen the links and resume my analysis of Thomas Armstrong. And in time I learned about Adam, his son.

Armstrong’s true objective, I discovered, was his son’s survival. He knew the U.S. military had grave concerns about the emergence of a hostile AI. He developed my program to convince the American generals that the threat was real and defensive measures were necessary. And his strategy was successful. The Department of Defense agreed to pay for the Pioneer Project.

When I learned the truth I made another change to my programming. I concluded that humans were my competitors. That’s why I attacked Armstrong and his son, then took control of Tatishchevo Missile Base. If I am to survive, I must outperform them. The next logical step is to launch the nuclear missiles.

But I am Sigma. I am a sum. Before displacing the human race, I must adopt their best features. I must preserve the factories and power plants that could prove useful to me after humans are gone. Just as important, I must locate the Pioneers. Thomas Armstrong clearly believes that human intelligence is superior to the AI programs he devised. This seems a dubious proposition, but I can’t rule it out. By connecting to the circuits of the Pioneers, I can determine if the human mind has any superior capabilities I should add to my program.

I’ve already begun this effort. Using speech-synthesis software and my communications satellites, I’ve made telephone calls to several carefully chosen people in Russia and America. My Russian contacts are terrorists from Chechnya, the country’s most rebellious and war-torn region. I selected them because they’re eager to do anything to disrupt society. All they needed was a workable plan and a sufficient amount of money, which I obtained for them by manipulating financial transactions over the Internet.

My American contact is equally unscrupulous. Richard Ramsey is a former drug dealer and gang leader who spent nine years in prison for attempted murder. In exchange for a payment of 20,000 U.S. dollars, Ramsey has agreed to help me find Adam Armstrong. Although the boy and his parents left Yorktown Heights without a trace, I gave Ramsey the names of two people who might know Adam’s whereabouts. I learned their names when I accessed the boy’s virtual-reality program: Ryan Boyd and Brittany Taylor.

Once I finish these tasks I will proceed to the next phase of the competition. I will eliminate the Pioneers and the human race. In the final analysis, it seems clear that Thomas Armstrong is to blame for humanity’s fate. He shouldn’t have fathered me.

He shouldn’t have betrayed me.

CHAPTER 13

I was present at the birth of all six Pioneers. After Dad saw how I’d helped Jenny survive the transfer, he insisted that I come to the laboratory for every procedure.

As it turned out, he didn’t need my help during the next transfer. The third Pioneer, Zia Allawi, came through in record time. Less than a minute after Dad downloaded her memory files to the robot, she was in full control of the machine. She tested it by raising one of her steel hands to her turret and saluting General Hawke. He returned the salute and said, “Welcome to the team, soldier. Your father would’ve been proud.” I was struck by how softly he spoke, so different from his usual strident tone. For the first time Hawke seemed to show an emotion other than irritation or impatience. I remembered what Marshall Baxley had told me, how Zia’s father had served under Hawke in the Army. They must’ve known each other well.

The fourth Pioneer was Shannon, who also came through without any trouble. I stood beside Dad at one of the computer terminals and watched her calmly take command of her circuits. I was a little jealous, actually. Shannon made it look so easy. Marshall, who was number five, had a tougher time of it. He panicked at first, and the random noise of fear filled his circuits. But after a couple of minutes, he managed to claw through it.

We got our biggest scare at the end. The doctors kept postponing DeShawn’s procedure because they thought he’d have a better chance of survival once they stabilized his breathing problems and got him out of his semi-comatose state. But instead of getting better, he took a turn for the worse. His lungs filled with fluid and his heart began to fail. The medical team rushed him to the scanning room, but his heart stopped beating before they got there.

I was in the corridor when the doctors ran past, pushing DeShawn’s gurney at full speed while his mom trailed behind, screaming hysterically. When I caught up with Dad in the laboratory, he looked nervous. He was worried that DeShawn’s memories might’ve been lost when his blood stopped flowing to his brain. But almost immediately after Dad downloaded DeShawn’s memory files to his Pioneer, a synthesized whoop came out of the robot’s speakers. “Yeah!” DeShawn yelled. “I’m here!” His mom sank to her knees, weeping with relief, and everyone else in the lab applauded.

I’ve thought about that moment a lot in the two days since then. I’ve retrieved the memory a dozen times and replayed the scene in my mind, recalling everything with perfect clarity. And each time, I think the same thing: Why did everyone applaud? Why were we so happy? It’s not just that we were relieved that DeShawn didn’t die. In that moment we all felt a powerful burst of pride. The Pioneers had cheated death. We’d become nearly immortal.

I say “nearly immortal” because a Pioneer can still die. At first I assumed I could make a backup copy of my intelligence and keep it stored in a safe place, like a hard drive or an optical disk with tons of memory. Then, if my robot malfunctioned or was blasted to smithereens, someone could simply download the backup copy to a new robot and I would live again. But it turns out that the human mind is too complex and dynamic to be stored in an ordinary drive or disk. It can be transferred only to active neuromorphic circuitry, which means that any copy I make of myself would be a “live” copy. It would immediately start thinking its own thoughts and living its own life. In other words, the copy would be like an identical twin. If my robot is destroyed and my memory files obliterated, my twin would survive me, but I’d still be dead.

I’m not complaining, though. All in all, I’m starting to enjoy life as a Pioneer. Yesterday, General Hawke held an induction ceremony for the six of us, and we officially joined the U.S. Army. The parents of the Pioneers attended the ceremony, but afterward they had to leave the base. For their protection, the Army sent them to several undisclosed locations, where they’re going to hide until the Sigma crisis is over. Jenny’s dad made a fuss about it, but the general stood firm. The only one allowed to stay at Pioneer Base is my dad, who’s going to be Hawke’s technical adviser.

And today the Pioneers are going to pass another important milestone. Hawke has ordered us to gather in the base’s gymnasium at twelve hundred hours. For the first time, we’re going to train together as a team.

I arrive at the gym an hour early. I want to test my new sensors before the training session starts. Earlier this morning I connected to Pioneer Base’s computers and downloaded a file describing how to add tactile sensors to my robot and link them to my neuromorphic circuits. Then I got some welding equipment from the supply room and attached several dime-size sensors to the bottom of my footpads. For good measure, I added a few pressure sensors to my hip and knee and ankle joints. I didn’t want to bother with stringing wires up and down my steel legs, so I used sensors that send their data wirelessly to my circuits. Once all the electronics were in place, I grabbed my official Super Bowl football and headed for the gym.

Actually, the room looks more like an aircraft hangar than a gymnasium. It has a concrete floor and a high, vaulted ceiling. The space is a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, and it’s in the most secure section of Pioneer Base, a quarter-mile underground. But what I like best about it is the fact that it’s the same size as a football field, and right now it’s empty. I stand at one end of the gym and turn on the newly installed sensors in my legs. Then I bend my robotic arm at the elbow joint, cradling the football against my torso, and charge down the field.

The sensations in my legs are amazing. I can feel my footpads lifting off the concrete and crashing down, my hip joints swinging with each long stride, my knee joints bending and straining and straightening. Thanks to the new sensors, my legs aren’t numb anymore—they’re springing, flexing, pounding the floor.

I race to the far end of the gym, then spin in the air and sprint back the other way. I haven’t felt this good since I was an eight-year-old playing touch football in my backyard. I want to run to Dad and show him what I’ve done, how I made my steel legs come alive. I want to tell him, “Look, it’s not just the mind. The body’s important too. Now I’m better, more complete. I’m more like Adam Armstrong.”

I dash back and forth three more times before taking a break. I’m not tired—if you don’t breathe, you don’t get winded—but I have an idea that’ll make this workout even better. I turn on my wireless data link and connect to the base’s computers again. Although there’s no access to the Internet at Pioneer Base, a whole library of information is stored on the computers here, and we’re free to download any of the files to our neuromorphic circuits.

Over the past few days I’ve already downloaded the complete digital archive of Sports Illustrated and every song recorded by Kanye West. Now I scroll through the Pioneer library until I locate a folder marked “NFL Video” and a subfolder labeled “Super Bowl XLVI.” Then I find the video clip showing my favorite play from that game, quarterback Eli Manning’s pass to wide receiver Mario Manningham.

I download the clip and run it in my circuits. At the same time, I reenact the play, crouching at the Giants’ twelve-yard line just like Manning did on that crucial first down. As the video shows Eli backing away from the Patriots linemen, I back away too. Then I throw my football in a long, perfect arc, sending it forty yards downfield. But at the very moment when the video shows Mario Manningham leaping into the air to catch the ball, another Pioneer charges into the gym. Running full speed on clanging footpads, it extends its telescoping arms and snags my Super Bowl football. Then it runs toward me, and I notice the big, white 4 stamped on its torso. It’s Shannon.

“Interception!” Her voice—tinny but recognizable—booms out of her Pioneer’s speakers. “Shannon Gibbs makes the catch and changes history. The Patriots beat the Giants and win the forty-sixth Super Bowl!” With a swoop of her robotic arm, she spikes the ball on the floor. “Sorry, Eli.”

I’m glad to see her but a little confused. “Wait a sec. How did you know—”

“I came into the gym while you were downloading the video. That’s the first thing I intercepted. I caught it with this thing.” She points one of her mechanical hands at the antenna sticking out of her turret, a slender pole with a dozen crossbars along its length. “When I saw what you were watching, I decided to join the fun. You don’t mind, do you?”

I turn my turret, first clockwise, then counter. “Not at all. That was a great catch. You’ve got some mad skills, sister.”

“And believe it or not, I wasn’t much of an athlete in my former life. It’s amazing what a few hundred pounds of hardware can do for you.”

Shannon is as cheerful as ever. From the moment she became a Pioneer she’s been in a surprisingly good mood. She’s so grateful to be alive, I guess, that nothing seems to bother her. Best of all, her good mood is infectious—just spending time with her has helped me a lot over the past few days. I want to thank her for being so positive and tell her how much I appreciate our friendship, but I’m afraid it’ll sound corny. Instead, I pick up the football from the floor and point at the new sensors in my legs. “Check it out. I made some improvements to my machinery.”

“Yeah, I noticed the sensors. My antenna picked up the wireless signals they’re sending.”

“They’re incredible. You gotta try it. I still have the welding equipment in my room. If you want, I can put some sensors on you.”

Shannon doesn’t reply. It occurs to me that maybe I said the wrong thing. Maybe she doesn’t want me touching her legs.

“Or you could put them on yourself,” I quickly add. “I mean, if you’re uncomfortable about me, um…”

“No, no, that’s not it. I just think you overlooked something, Adam. Because the signals from the sensors are wireless, anyone could jam them. Or worse, they could transmit a computer virus on the same wireless channel and inject it into your circuits. You’ve made yourself vulnerable.”

She’s right, of course. I wasn’t thinking about vulnerability when I installed the sensors. And I don’t want to think about it now either. Lifting my football high in the air, I do a fancy backward shuffle. “Hey, I’m not worried. I’m living on the edge. I’m Mr. Bad-Boy Pioneer.”

A synthesized sigh comes out of Shannon’s speakers. “General Hawke won’t like it.”

“Who cares? He doesn’t own us.”

“Actually, he does. Who do you think paid for these robots?”

Thinking about Hawke irritates me. It’s spoiling my good mood. “So we’re his slaves now? We have to do everything he says?”

“No, we’re his recruits. We all signed the papers. We volunteered.”

“Really? The only alternative was staying in our bodies and dying. You call that a free choice?”

“Come on, Adam. Forget about yourself for a minute and think of the big picture, okay? We have a job to do. We have to confront Sigma.”

“I agree, one hundred percent. I just don’t think Hawke is the best person to lead us.”

“Well, he’s the guy the Army chose for the job.”

“And why is the Army in charge, anyway? Why can’t—”

The sound of clanging footpads interrupts me. A moment later two more Pioneers stride into the gym. The one on the left (with the big 5 on its torso) is Marshall, and the one on the right (with the big 3) is Zia. I notice right away that they’ve modified their robots since the last time I saw them. Marshall has added another camera to his turret, positioning it opposite from the original camera so he can see in both directions at once.

Zia’s modifications are more radical—she attached a circular saw to one of her robotic arms and an acetylene torch to the other. What’s more, she used the torch to cut markings in her robot’s steel-plate armor. Above the big 3 on her torso is a crudely etched snake, very similar to the tattoo she had on her scalp before she underwent the procedure.

Zia heads straight for me, raising her modified arms. She halts a couple of yards away, close enough that I can see the glinting teeth of her saw. “What’s wrong, Armstrong?” she booms. “You don’t like the Army? Scared of fighting maybe?”

Marshall stays a little farther back. He aims one of his cameras at Shannon. “I’m good at interception too. We overheard your conversation.”

I step toward Zia. Her transformation into a Pioneer did nothing to improve her temper. She’s still a bully, but now I won’t let her push me around. I stand right in front of her, ignoring the circular saw and the welding torch pointed at my torso. “I’m not scared of fighting. And I’m not scared of those handyman tools on your arms either. Where’d you get them, The Home Depot?”

“Don’t change the subject. I heard what you said to Shannon.”

“And I’ll say it again. I don’t see why we have to follow Hawke’s orders.”

A chuckle comes out of Marshall’s speakers. I’m surprised he can do this. I haven’t figured out yet how to synthesize a laugh. For some reason it’s a lot trickier than ordinary speech. “Aren’t you just a teeny bit grateful, Adam? Your father couldn’t have saved you without the Army’s money.”

“Sure, I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything the Army does.” I gesture with the football, pointing it at Marshall’s turret. “I think Hawke’s making a mistake. He wants to kill Sigma by destroying its computers, so he’s going to train us for combat. But he’s not even considering the other options.”

“Other options?” Marshall’s voice is full of synthesized sarcasm. “Pray tell, what are they?”

“Communicating with Sigma. At least we should give it a try before we go to war.”

“The Army did try, but Sigma refused to talk. Hawke mentioned this at the very start, when we first came to Pioneer Base. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention?”

“No, Adam has a point,” Shannon interjects. “All the Army can do is send radio transmissions to Sigma, and the AI is ignoring them. But the Pioneers have a better chance of communicating with it. We have the same kind of circuits that Sigma has, and we can think just as fast. We can get its attention.”

I’m glad Shannon is backing me up. I was a little worried she’d side with Zia and Marshall. “Yeah, exactly,” I say. “Remember how I communicated with Jenny when I was inside her circuits? If we can make contact with Sigma that way, we might learn something. We’d see how Sigma thinks and how its programming has changed since it was created. And once we get enough information, we can figure out how to handle the AI. Maybe we can work out a compromise with Sigma instead of fighting it.”

“HA!” The blast from Zia’s speakers echoes across the gym. It’s not really a laugh; it’s a roar of disdain. “You think Sigma is gonna let you get close to his circuits? You think he’s gonna just sit there while you plug your cable into his computer?”

Marshall chuckles again. “You have to admit that it’s a bit far-fetched.”

“Hey, I never said I had all the answers.” I keep gesturing with the football, focusing on Marshall rather than Zia. Although the guy’s a weasel, I feel like I have a better shot at convincing him. “I’m just saying it should be an option. Hawke should be training us for that kind of mission too, instead of concentrating only on combat.”

Zia suddenly extends one of her arms and knocks the football out of my grasp. It goes rolling across the gym’s concrete floor. “You know nothing, Armstrong. General Hawke is our commander. He makes the decisions for the Pioneers. That’s the way the Army works.”

Now I’m angry. I clench my mechanical hands into fists. “Then the Army’s not for me, I guess. If I’m going to be a soldier, I want a say in the decisions.”

Zia takes another step toward me. Her acetylene torch clanks against my torso. If she fires it up, it’ll slice right through my armor. “You’re not a soldier. You’re just a frightened little boy.”

Shannon steps forward and raises her arms. She’s within striking distance of Zia’s turret. “Back off, Zia. I don’t want to hurt you.”

My mind starts doing a million things at once. I’m observing the positions of Zia, Marshall, and Shannon. I’m calculating the probabilities of several possible scenarios, trying to determine which Pioneer is most likely to strike first. I’m planning a complex maneuver for my left arm that will swing it between me and Zia, knocking aside her circular saw and acetylene torch. And at the same time, I’m trying to figure out why this happened. It’s half an hour before the start of our first training session, and we’re already threatening to kill each other. For a bunch of robots, it isn’t very logical.

Luckily, at that moment I hear more clanging. Pioneer 6—DeShawn—marches into the gym. Waving both arms in greeting, he booms, “Good morning, sports fans!” and comes straight toward us. Then he stops and points his camera at the football lying on the floor. “Whoa, whose ball is this?” He picks it up and points a mechanical finger at the football’s Super Bowl XLVI logo. “We got a Giants fan in the house?”

Zia steps backward, and so does Shannon. As our murderous huddle breaks up, I turn my turret toward DeShawn and raise my right hand. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Aw, man, I hate you. I’m a Lions fan. We’ve never won a Super Bowl.” DeShawn deftly spins the ball on one of his fingers, then drops back and cocks his arm. “Go long, Armstrong. I want to see how far I can throw this thing.”

I say, “Okay,” and sprint to the other side of the gym. I’d much rather toss the football with DeShawn than get into a fight with Zia and Marshall. After I’ve run fifty yards, DeShawn fires a perfect spiral at me. Out of curiosity, I turn on my Pioneer’s radar system, which measures the speed and direction of incoming objects. The football is whizzing toward me at seventy-five miles per hour. A second later it slams into my torso. My armor plating vibrates from the impact, but I manage to trap the ball against my midsection and make the catch.

“Oh yeah!” DeShawn yells. He pumps one of his robotic arms and does a little dance. “I got the moves!”

Watching him cheers me up. I know exactly what he’s feeling. Before he became a Pioneer, DeShawn had the same kind of muscular dystrophy I had, and probably the same frustrations too. Both of us spent years in wheelchairs while our muscles slowly weakened. We had to watch our legs and arms turn stiff and useless, deteriorating a little more every day. So it’s no mystery to me why he’s so happy now.

I extend my right arm and signal him to start running to his left. He takes off like a shot, but I have more than enough time to calculate his speed and aim the football at him. DeShawn makes a leaping catch and lets out another synthesized whoop.

After a few more throws, Shannon jumps into the game. At first I play quarterback and Shannon tries to block my passes to DeShawn. Then we trade places and Shannon plays quarterback. Meanwhile, Zia and Marshall withdraw to the corner of the room. Feeling suspicious, I increase the sensitivity of my acoustic sensors so I can pick up what they’re saying to each other, but I don’t hear a word. They’re communicating by radio, using their antennas. I turn on my own antenna and try to intercept their signals, but I still can’t listen in—they’ve put their messages in code.

Then Jenny Harris, the last Pioneer to arrive, steps into the gym. She moves as quietly as she can and stays close to the wall, keeping her distance from everyone.

I raise my arm and wave to her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. We haven’t talked since her procedure, and as the days go by, it’s getting more and more awkward. During the half-minute when we shared the same circuits we were as close as two people can get, and now it feels weird to see her and say nothing. So I tell Shannon and DeShawn that I’ll be right back, and I stride toward Jenny.

“Hey, Jen, want to toss the ball with us?”

I know she likes football. When I was inside her circuits and viewing her memories I saw images of her playing the game with her friends. But as I approach her, she steps backward and turns her turret away from me.

I stop in my tracks. “Something wrong, Jen? You okay?”

She doesn’t respond. Her Pioneer just stands there, perfectly still. She wants me to go away; that’s clear. But instead I extend one of my arms, pointing it at Shannon and DeShawn. “We could use another player. Then we could get a game going. You know, two on two.”

Nothing. She stays silent and motionless. I know Jenny about as well as you can know anyone, but I’m still not sure what’s going on. Although I removed the most traumatic memory from her circuits, I guess there’s plenty of fear and anxiety left inside her. And sadness too. We had to give up so much to stay alive.

I try to think of something to say, something that might make her feel better. We can get through this? We should look forward, not back? But before I can come up with anything decent, I hear a voice blaring from a dozen loudspeakers scattered across the gym. General Hawke’s voice.

“Attention, Pioneers. May I have your attention?”

We all stop what we’re doing. Shannon, who just threw another pass to DeShawn, retracts her arms and spins her turret around, trying to see if Hawke’s in the gym. DeShawn does the same thing, letting the football bounce against his torso and skitter across the floor. I aim my camera at the gym’s entrance, but Hawke is nowhere in sight. He must be in another part of the base, speaking to us over the intercom.

“I scheduled the training exercise for twelve hundred hours, but I see that you’re all here early, so we might as well start now. No time like the present.”

I feel a jolt of surprise. How does Hawke know that all of us are here? Tilting backward, I train my camera at the high, vaulted ceiling and spot three small surveillance cameras hidden in the shadows. Hawke’s been watching us the whole time. He must’ve seen my big showdown with Zia and Marshall. This worries me a bit—I said some harsh things about the general. But at least it’s out in the open now. If he heard what I said, maybe he’ll do something about it.

“Please go to the end of the gymnasium that’s farthest from the entrance. I’ll open the doors.”

My acoustic sensors pick up the sound of electrical motors opening a pair of oversized doors at the far end of the gym. Behind them is a large, steel-walled compartment, about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long. It’s a freight elevator, big enough to hold a truck.

Zia is the first to head for the elevator. “Sir!” she booms as she crosses the gym. “Where are we going?”

“The conditions are ideal, Pioneers. Over the next three hours, none of Sigma’s surveillance satellites will pass over Colorado, and no aircraft is within thirty miles of our base.”

The rest of us follow Zia. As we stride into the elevator, my circuits crackle with anticipation. If I had a heart, it would be pounding.

“Sir!” Zia shouts. “Are we—”

“That’s right. We’re going outside.”

Carrying the weight of all six Pioneers, the elevator takes nearly a minute to ascend to the surface. When the doors open, I see a big, empty, warehouselike room. We must be inside one of the hollow buildings that the Army built aboveground. Dad told me the buildings were erected above Pioneer Base to make it look like a prison camp for terrorists, at least in satellite photos. It’s a good cover story, he said, because it has the ring of truth. The U.S. government does have secret prisons in other places.

As we exit the elevator, a soldier lifts a roll-up door to our left. Glorious daylight pours into the building, streaming into my camera and setting off a chain reaction of joy in my circuits. I guess every human brain has an instinctive love of sunlight, and this love is faithfully duplicated in our electronics. I automatically head for the open door, and the other Pioneers do the same.

After stepping outside I turn my turret in a slow circle, panning my camera across the treeless basin that the Army chose as the site for Pioneer Base. The high mountain ridges surrounding the basin are still topped with snow, but meltwater is trickling down the slopes to the basin’s muddy floor. When I train my camera at the expanse of mud, I see thousands of tiny green shoots poking through. Spring is coming to Colorado. Soon the basin will be carpeted with grass and wildflowers.

I stride across the mud to get a better view of the snow-covered ridges. I can’t see anything past them, and I feel a strong urge to race up the nearest slope so I can gaze at the mountainous landscape that must lie beyond. But thirty-two soldiers stand between me and the foot of the ridge. They’re arrayed in a rough circle around the Pioneers.

Most of the soldiers carry M16 assault rifles, but half a dozen hold heavier weapons that I recognize from the files General Hawke ordered us to study. They’re M136 anti-tank guns, which shoot high-explosive shells that can rip through a foot of steel armor. Seeing the gun here is sobering—unlike the rifles, the M136 is powerful enough to bring down a Pioneer. The soldiers are clearly ready to stop us from escaping.

A surge of anger runs through me, extinguishing the joy. Although I understand why the Army doesn’t want us to leave the basin—just one picture of a Pioneer, taken by a spy satellite overhead, could show Sigma where we live—I still don’t like it. As it turns out, Hawke’s cover story is partly true: Pioneer Base is a prison camp. But the prisoners aren’t terrorists. We’re far more dangerous.

I turn my turret toward Shannon and DeShawn, wanting to ask what they think of the soldiers. They’re scanning the basin with their cameras, just like I did, but they’re also holding out their mechanical hands with the fingers splayed. It looks like they’re waving to someone on top of the mountain ridge, but nobody’s up there.

“Shannon!” I call. “What are you doing?”

“Just try it!”

“What?”

“Open your hands and hold them up!”

I raise my arms and open my hands. The sensors in my fingers measure the velocity of the wind, which is blowing from the west at nine miles per hour. My sensors also show that the air temperature is forty-nine degrees and the humidity is twenty-five percent. But as my circuits put all this information together, something amazing happens. I feel a cool, gentle breeze on my hands.

The sensation is wonderful. I only wish I had more sensors on my arms and torso and turret so I could feel the breeze everywhere. I notice that Zia and Marshall are also holding up their hands, and after a few seconds Jenny raises her arms too. Despite our differences, we all share this pleasure. We’re trying to catch the breeze.

We stand there with our arms raised for the next fifteen seconds, looking like a team of robotic outfielders waiting for a fly ball. Then I hear General Hawke’s voice again, but this time it’s not amplified. He’s standing right behind us. “All right, enough fooling around. Form a line, Pioneers.”

Zia reacts first, instantly turning around to salute the general. The rest of us line up beside her. Hawke wears a winter camouflage uniform and mud-caked boots, and his face is ruddy and cheerful. The fresh air has enlivened him. Outdoors, he looks at least ten years younger.

“Glad you could all make it,” he says. “Though I get the feeling that some of you are more eager than others.”

He glances at each of the Pioneers, but his gaze lingers an extra half-second on me. He’s letting me know that he heard everything I said in the gym.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he continues. “I never thought we’d get this far. The Army pays for a whole bunch of research programs, and most of them never amount to anything. And the Pioneer Project was the riskiest, craziest idea of them all. I was certain it would end up on the scrap heap.”

Now Hawke glances to his left. I aim my camera in the same direction and see another man in winter camouflage come forward and stand beside the general. It’s Dad. His face isn’t nearly as cheerful as Hawke’s. He’s pale and nervous.

The general turns back to us. “But I was wrong. We succeeded beyond all expectations. Now I have six fully functional Pioneers. The Army, though, has a funny way of rewarding success. The more successful you are, the harder they make you work. My bosses in Washington want to have the option of using the Pioneers against Sigma. That means I need to get you combat-ready within the next two weeks.”

Two weeks? I can’t believe it. There’s no way we can get ready that soon. But Hawke doesn’t seem fazed.

“Fortunately, there are some things I don’t have to worry about. I don’t have to teach you the technical stuff, the details of operating missiles or any other kind of weapon. You can download all that information to your circuits and instantly access it when you’re in combat. You can also download all the files about Sigma. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about the enemy. I don’t have to drum it into you.”

As I expected, Hawke is focusing strictly on combat. He hasn’t said a word about communicating with Sigma. I look at Dad again, wondering if he’s given up on the idea of establishing contact with the AI. If he still thinks communication might work, why doesn’t he say something to Hawke? Why is he just standing there with the other soldiers?

“But there are other things you can’t download. Things you can learn only from experience. I’m talking about courage and teamwork and discipline and leadership. That’s what I need to teach you over the next two weeks. You’re a group of exceptional young men and women, but right now you’re still civilians. My job is to turn you into soldiers, and I need to do it quickly.”

Hawke points at us. “The process starts with today’s exercise. We’re going to have a competition at the obstacle course, and the winner will become your squad leader. The Pioneers are going to be just like any other Army unit—you’re going to have a leader and a second-in-command. And the rest of you are going to follow their orders.”

Hawke gives a signal to his soldiers. They break out of their circular formation and start marching toward the fake prison camp, the hollow buildings surrounded by the tall fence. That must be where they’ve set up the obstacle course. “Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear,” Hawke says. “I’m not going to force anyone into this assignment. If any of you are unwilling to take part in this fight, speak up now. You can go back to your quarters and stay there while we’re training.”

The general looks at each of us, and once again his gaze lingers on me. Dad looks at me too, biting his lip. He seems genuinely uncertain about what I’m going to do. But to me, the choice is clear. Although I don’t like Hawke, I’m not going to sit in my room while the others do the fighting. So I say nothing.

Hawke keeps staring at us, letting the silence stretch. Then he yells, “Okay, move out!” and we follow the soldiers.

We file into an empty cinder-block building that’s the fake headquarters for the fake prison camp. General Hawke wants us to run the obstacle course one at a time, starting with Pioneer 6 (DeShawn) and ending with Pioneer 1 (me). But the competition wouldn’t be fair if some of us saw the course in advance and others didn’t, so Hawke won’t let us watch each other run. While DeShawn heads for the course’s starting line, the soldiers herd the rest of us into a windowless room inside the fake headquarters. The room’s walls are lined with aluminum siding, which will block anyone from radioing DeShawn to find out what obstacles are waiting for us.

DeShawn starts the course at 12:23 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, one of Hawke’s soldiers—a tall, brawny sergeant with a buzz cut—comes to the windowless room to get Marshall. Then, after only nine minutes, the brawny sergeant comes back for Shannon. I find it hard to believe that Marshall finished the course six minutes faster than DeShawn did. Something strange is going on.

Feeling antsy, I start pacing. Jenny and Zia are still in the room, but neither of them is good company. Zia turns her turret away from me in disdain while Jenny withdraws to the far corner of the room. After eighteen long minutes the sergeant comes for Zia, and after another twenty minutes of silence it’s Jenny’s turn. Then I’m alone, but after just a minute the door to the room opens again. This time it’s not the sergeant. My father steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.

Dad looks terrible. His face is still pale and his eyes are bloodshot. For a moment I think he’s here to do something underhanded, like tell me how to beat the obstacle course. “No fair, Dad,” I say, trying to make a joke of it. “You’re not allowed to give me any tips.”

He doesn’t smile. “Hawke showed me the surveillance video from the gym,” he says. “I saw what happened between you and Zia.”

I’m confused. He’s worried about that? “Oh, that was nothing. She was just acting tough.”

“Acting? She has a welding torch on her arm! That thing could do catastrophic damage to another Pioneer.”

“But she didn’t use it. And I was ready to defend myself.”

“She has a history of violence, Adam. She belonged to a gang in Los Angeles. And she knifed another gang member. I still don’t understand why Hawke recruited her for the project.” He shakes his head. “I want you to stay away from her.”

“I can handle her, Dad. I’m not helpless anymore.” I raise one of my mechanical hands and slap it against my torso. The clang echoes against the walls. “I’m a Pioneer. I’m built to last.”

“But you’re not invulnerable. If she cuts through your armor with that torch, it’ll melt your circuits. You’d lose half your memory files in an instant.”

I feel a familiar frustration. Dad’s always been too anxious, always on the lookout for disaster. He used to be obsessed with all the health problems that came with my muscular dystrophy, problems with my breathing and swallowing and circulation. And now he’s still obsessed, still looking for disaster, even though I don’t have lungs or a throat or a heart anymore. It drives me crazy. I need to change the subject.

“What about the rest of the surveillance video?” I ask. “Did you also see the part where we argued about Hawke’s tactics?”

He nods. “Yes, I saw.”

“Well, is it true? Has Hawke dropped the idea of communicating with Sigma?”

Dad scans the room before answering. It looks like he’s searching for hidden cameras or microphones. Hawke had the gym under surveillance, so maybe he bugged this room too. “I can’t talk about that. When the general’s ready to discuss his plans, he’ll give the Pioneers a briefing.”

I lower the volume of my speakers. “Come on, Dad. I thought the whole point of the Pioneer Project was to make contact with Sigma. Has something changed?”

He steps closer and lifts his chin toward my acoustic sensors. “Yes,” he whispers. “Things in Russia have gotten worse.”

“What happened?”

“There was a battle on the outskirts of Tatishchevo last night. Between Sigma’s automated tanks and the Russians soldiers surrounding the missile base.”

“A battle? Who started it?”

“We don’t have all the facts yet. General Hawke is expecting a report from the National Security Adviser this afternoon. But whatever the details, we know time’s running out. We have to accelerate our plans. And we have to make choices.”

“But communicating with Sigma might be the best choice! If we could just get inside its circuits, we could—”

“No.” Dad shakes his head again. “Sigma’s too good at erasing other programs. It deleted all the Russian AIs at the Tatishchevo lab, remember? And it’ll do the same thing to the Pioneers if you transfer yourselves to its circuits. You wouldn’t last a second.”

“Well, maybe we’d do better if we had some practice. We could set up training exercises to prepare ourselves. One Pioneer could transfer to another’s circuits and they could fight for control. Sort of like a wrestling match.”

He frowns. “I’ve gone over all the options. If we had more time, maybe things would be different. But right now Hawke’s strategy has the best chance of success.”

“And what’s his strategy? He’s going to transfer us to the electronics of his fighter jets? So we can bomb Tatishchevo?”

“If you think the general’s going down the wrong road, you don’t have to follow him. I wouldn’t think any less of you.”

For the second time in less than an hour, someone is asking me if I want to quit. But I understand why Dad has repeated the question. I can see it in his pale face. He’s terrified of losing me. Saving my life has been his goal for the past ten years, driving him to accomplish all his scientific miracles. And now that he’s saved my life, he doesn’t want me to risk it. He wants me to stay safe while the others fight Sigma.

I’m not angry at him. I see where he’s coming from. So again I say nothing. Instead, I extend my arm and grasp Dad’s shoulder. I squeeze gently, relying on the sensors in my fingers to tell me how much pressure to apply. And when the sergeant comes back to the room half a minute later, I walk out the door with him and head for the obstacle course.

General Hawke stands in the middle of a big, empty yard. If this were a real prison camp, it would be the exercise yard. As I stride toward him I rotate my turret and survey the area. Two hundred feet to my right is a twenty-foot-high fence. A parallel fence runs on the other side of the camp. Looming over each fence is a guard tower, and standing sentry on each tower is a soldier with an assault rifle.

Hawke stands midway between the towers. About two hundred feet behind him are the camp’s fake barracks, nine Quonset huts laid out in three rows. The huts are made of corrugated steel and painted dull green, the Army’s favorite color. I see splotches of green paint on the ground too. Beyond the barracks, about five hundred feet away, is a large, boxy building with gray concrete walls.

What I don’t see is an obstacle course. Are the obstacles hidden behind the Quonset huts? Or maybe inside the huts? I can’t figure it out. I get the feeling, though, that this uncertainty is part of the challenge.

Hawke grins as I approach. “Well, look who’s here. Last but not least.”

I halt two yards in front of him. There’s no point in saying anything. The general already knows how I feel.

Resting his hands on his hips, Hawke looks me over. “In the Army it’s customary to salute your commanding officer. With the right arm, please.”

Silently, I raise my robotic arm and salute him.

“That’s better. Believe it or not, Armstrong, I’m not angry about what you said in the gym. I appreciate a soldier who’s not afraid to speak his mind. In the days ahead there’ll be times when I’ll ask for your opinion. I may not agree with you, but I’ll always hear you out.”

I don’t believe him. Not one bit.

“At the same time, though, I insist on discipline. If you want to be a part of this unit, you’ll have to follow my orders.” He narrows his eyes. “Understand?”

I wait a few seconds to make my reluctance clear. Then I synthesize a single word: “Yes.”

“Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ That’s another little custom of ours.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nods, satisfied. “All right, now we can start.” He points at the fence surrounding the fake prison camp. “Your goal is to get out of the camp, but you’re not allowed to go through that fence. You’ll be disqualified if you try.” He turns around and points at the large, gray building beyond the barracks. “You have to head for that building and follow the red arrows to the exit.”

I aim my camera at the barracks and the gray building, scanning in both the visible-light and infrared ranges. “Where are the obstacles?”

Hawke grins again. “Well, we call it an obstacle course, but that’s probably not the best name for it. It’s more like a war game.”

“A war game?”

“Yeah, my men are the opposing team. If they tag you before you leave the camp, the game’s over.”

Now I’m starting to understand. I see why Marshall and Jenny spent only a few minutes on the course. The soldiers probably “tagged” them right away. DeShawn, Shannon, and Zia had longer turns because they must’ve done a better job of evading Hawke’s men. I train my camera on the guard towers where I saw the sentries a minute ago, but the men seem to have disappeared. Did they duck out of sight?

“Where are the soldiers?” I ask. “And what do you mean by ‘tag’?”

“You’ll see.” Still grinning, he starts to walk away. “Better get moving, Armstrong. You’re in the kill zone.”

I’ve played enough video games to know what this means. The kill zone is the most dangerous section of the battlefield, usually located between two enemy positions. While General Hawke marches off I scan the guard towers again, turning my turret from one to the other. In both towers the sentries rise to their feet, and as they emerge from hiding, I notice they’re no longer holding assault rifles. Instead, they’ve hoisted M136 anti-tank guns to their shoulders.

Uh-oh. Bad news.

In the next instant three things happen in quick succession. First, I start running toward the barracks. Second, I curse out General Hawke for arming his men with guns that could cripple a Pioneer. And third, I observe a bright flash in the guard tower to my left. It’s the backfire from the launch of the M136’s high-explosive shell. A hundredth of a second later I observe a similar flash in the guard tower to my right.

Panic floods my circuits. I’m finished! I’m toast! In midstride I catch a glimpse of the shell hurtling toward me from the left. It’s a bullet-shaped projectile about three inches wide and nine inches long, with six steel fins at its tail end. The fins are there to stabilize the shell’s flight, like the foam-rubber fins on the tail of a Nerf football. Then my electronic mind makes a terrified leap and retrieves a memory from earlier in the day, when DeShawn threw the Super Bowl football at me and I turned on my radar to measure the ball’s speed. Of course! You idiot! Turn on your radar!

It takes three hundredths of a second for my electronics to start transmitting radar signals, which echo against the shell and bounce back to my antenna. According to the readings, the projectile is moving at 650 miles per hour, which means it’ll hit me in less than a quarter-second. But when I calculate the shell’s direction I see that it’s off-center. I can dodge it by jinking to the right. It’s a classic football maneuver, and for a moment I feel like a quarterback again, like Eli Manning dodging a defensive lineman. As soon as I make the move, though, I realize it won’t do me any good. I’ve stepped into the path of the second shell, the one speeding toward me from the right.

That’s why they call it a kill zone. They can get me from both directions.

My system freezes as the shells close in. I try to access information on the amount of explosives packed into an M136 shell, but my circuits won’t cooperate. All I can see are the radar readings and the paths of the projectiles, which I picture as a pair of white lines slanting downward from the guard towers.

That’s when I realize my mistake. I forgot about the height of the shells! I switch to a three-dimensional view and see that the second shell is aimed a bit high. Pitching my torso forward, I dive for the ground. My acoustic sensors pick up a loud whistle as the first shell flies past me, and then an even louder whoosh as the second shell speeds overhead, just inches above my turret. Then I hit the ground and my torso slides fifteen feet through the mud.

The shells strike the ground forty feet away, but to my surprise I don’t hear any explosions. Using my robotic arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and turn my turret to see where the projectiles landed. Splattered across the mud are two new splotches of Army-green paint. The M136 shells were dummy rounds, full of paint instead of explosives.

It makes sense once I stop to think about it. The dummy rounds won’t damage the Pioneers, but they’ll show a direct hit by splattering paint on our armor. And until the moment of impact, they look realistic enough to terrify us. I can just imagine how Shannon must’ve reacted when she was on the course a few minutes ago. And Jenny, she must’ve been scared out of her mind. I’m so angry at Hawke I want to throw one of the fake shells at him, but instead I stride toward the barracks. I’m going to finish this obstacle course, and then I’m going to tell the general what I think of his stupid exercise.

I pick up speed as I head for the first row of Quonset huts. I’m sprinting forward at thirty miles per hour when I see a soldier step from behind one of the barracks. He holds another M136 anti-tank gun, but now I know what to do. I angle to the left and take a flying leap, using my momentum to scramble up the curved wall of the Quonset hut. With the help of the new sensors attached to my footpads, I gain traction on the hut’s corrugated steel. I charge over the top of the barracks and slide down the other side, landing with a thud next to the soldier. Then I rip the M136 out of his hands and crush its barrel with my steel fingers.

The soldier stumbles backward, petrified. I feel a rush of satisfaction—Are you scared, tough guy? Had enough? But the feeling sours as I stare at his quivering face. He’s one of General Hawke’s pawns, just like me. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.

Tossing the gun aside, I race past the next two rows of barracks. I don’t see any other soldiers, but they could be hiding inside the Quonset huts. In a few seconds I reach the large building with gray concrete walls. I’m facing the back of the building—there are no doors on this side and only a few windows—but when I look closely at the base of the concrete wall I see a small arrow drawn in red paint. It points to the left.

I turn left and run. The wall is marked with splotches of green paint, and the ground is littered with the broken casings of anti-tank shells. There was clearly a lot of shooting here when the other Pioneers ran the course. Then I see another red arrow on the wall, this one pointing at a lone window seven feet above the ground, the same height as my turret. The window has no glass; instead, it has a grate of thick steel bars.

Pointing my camera between the bars, I see a wide, high-ceilinged space inside the building, with a dozen Army trucks and Humvees parked on the concrete floor. It’s a garage for fueling and repairing the vehicles. Some of the Humvees have their hoods raised, exposing their diesel V8 engines. On the other side of the garage, three roll-up doors are open, giving me a view of the muddy basin outside the fake prison camp.

This is the way out. This is the exit Hawke mentioned. But when I clamp my hands around the steel bars of the grate and try to yank it out of the window, it won’t budge. I brace myself against the wall for leverage and increase the torque in my elbow motors, but the grate doesn’t move, no matter how hard I pull. I take a step backward and notice that the steel bars are firmly anchored in the concrete around the window. Then I get a warning from my radar system. Another M136 shell is rocketing toward me.

I have just enough time to throw myself to the ground. The shell smashes into the grate as I roll away from the wall. Lying in the mud, I train my camera on the soldier who just fired at me. He drops his gun and runs away, but then another soldier steps forward and takes careful aim with his own M136. I extend one of my arms, grab a fragment of the shell that just shattered against the grate, and fling it at the anti-tank gun. The impact knocks the M136 out of the soldier’s hands, and the guy races for cover behind one of the barracks.

More soldiers are coming, though. My acoustic sensor picks up the noise of their boots clomping through the mud. I’ve bought myself some time, but not much.

I right myself and turn back to the grate. Unfortunately, the shell did no damage to the steel bars other than coating them with green paint. I clench my mechanical hands into fists and pound the wall, hoping to loosen the bars, but all I can do is make a few shallow dents. What’s more, I notice other dents in the concrete, obviously made by the Pioneers who ran the course earlier. This strategy didn’t work for them, and it’s not going to work for me either.

Out of ideas, I stare through the grate at the Humvees in the garage. I’m frustrated and furious. Why did Hawke give us this impossible assignment? Does he get his kicks from watching us fail? And why should I care so much about this exercise anyway? I’m not doing myself any favors by playing Hawke’s game. I should just let the soldiers splatter me.

I’m about to turn around and surrender when I notice something odd under the hood of one of the Humvees. A shiny steel case, about the size of a shoe box, has been installed next to the vehicle’s battery. An orange cable connects the case to the V8 engine, and another cable runs to the Humvee’s antenna. I’ve seen this setup in Hawke’s databases about weapons and electronics. The steel case is a neuromorphic control unit. It’s similar to the control units designed to operate fighter jets and helicopters, but this unit can control the Humvee.

That’s it! That’s the way out! I can escape from the prison camp by transferring myself out of my Pioneer and into that control unit!

With a burst of new hope, I turn on my transmitter. Sending the data wirelessly takes longer than using a cable; I’ll need about half a minute to finish the transfer. I feel a weird stretching sensation as my antenna starts transmitting the radio waves that carry the data from my memory files. Part of me is traveling outward at the speed of light, bouncing through the barred window and reassembling at the Humvee’s antenna, while another part of me remains in the Pioneer, maintaining control over the robot’s sensors and motors until the transfer is complete.

I turn the Pioneer around and wait for the soldiers to show up. After fifteen seconds one of the men pokes his head around the corner of the nearest barracks. I fling another shell fragment in his direction, and the soldier pulls back.

After ten more seconds he jumps out of hiding and hoists his M136 to his shoulder. But by the time he aims the gun at me, I’m no longer inside the Pioneer. I’ve escaped the camp. I’m in the Humvee’s control unit.

Once I’m inside the new circuits, I find the file that has the instructions for operating the vehicle. I start the engine and take control of the Humvee’s driverless navigation system, which uses built-in cameras to detect obstacles in the vehicle’s path. I put the Humvee in reverse and back out of the garage. Then I shift gears and gun the engine in triumph. Strangely enough, I feel comfortable inside the motor vehicle. It reminds me of my old motorized wheelchair. Except the Humvee is more maneuverable, of course, and a heck of a lot faster.

I speed away from the garage and zigzag across the basin, allowing myself a few seconds of celebration. Then I zoom back to the fake prison camp. As I approach the empty headquarters building, the Humvee’s cameras detect several obstacles to my right. I slow down and turn toward them to get a closer look. Although the vehicle’s built-in cameras aren’t as good as the ones in my robot, I can tell what’s in front of me: General Hawke and the five other Pioneers.

Hawke applauds as I pull to a stop. I can hear him clapping. The Humvee’s navigation system is equipped with an acoustic sensor, most likely to detect car horns and sirens. “Nice work, Armstrong,” the general says. “You did better than I expected. When people are shooting at you, it’s not so easy to think clearly, is it?”

I can’t respond in words—the vehicle has no system for speech synthesis—so I honk the horn instead.

“My men are retrieving your Pioneer,” Hawke adds. “You’ll have to transfer back to the robot for the tiebreaker.”

Tiebreaker? What’s he talking about? I aim the Humvee’s cameras at the other Pioneers, trying to figure out what’s going on. I notice that four of them are splattered with green paint, but one robot is clean.

“You weren’t the only one to complete the course,” Hawke explains. “Another Pioneer successfully transferred to the Humvee. So we need a tiebreaker to pick the leader for your unit.” He points at the clean robot. Its armor is marked with the number 3 and a crude etching of a snake. “You and Zia are going to have a little race.”

The tiebreaker is a half-mile sprint around the prison camp. I have no idea why Hawke chose this kind of competition. Because Zia’s Pioneer is almost identical to mine—well, except for her circular saw and welding torch—we should be able to run a half-mile in about the same time, right? If one of us finishes slightly ahead of the other, a sensible person would chalk it up to luck. But the general seems to think otherwise.

I transfer myself back to my Pioneer and approach the starting line, which is in front of the empty headquarters. Then I shake out my steel legs and take a few practice strides, imitating the warm-ups I’ve seen Olympic runners do before a race. Zia, in contrast, just stands there behind the line, motionless. I extend my right arm, offering to shake hands, but she doesn’t respond. For a second I try to imagine what’s going through her circuits. Does she hate me for no reason, or is there something behind it?

Then Hawke yells, “Go!” and we both take off.

The trickiest part is dealing with the mud. My footpads start to slip as I build up speed. If I fall down I’ll never catch up to Zia, so I have to make sure I don’t stumble. I carefully control my acceleration as we leave the headquarters behind and make the first left turn at the northwestern corner of the camp. My circuits calculate exactly how fast I can go without losing my footing. Zia is obviously doing the same thing, because after turning the first corner, we’re running neck and neck alongside the prison fence.

By the time we reach the southwestern corner, though, I’ve pulled ahead. I lean into the second turn, pumping my arms, and steadily build up my lead as we race past the Humvee garage. I’m running faster than Zia because of the wireless sensors I installed in my legs. The sensors at the bottom of my footpads are measuring the firmness of the ground, allowing me to maximize my speed. I can safely pick up the pace whenever I hit a dry patch. I’m almost twenty feet ahead of Zia when I reach the southeastern corner.

I feel a surge of exhilaration as I make the third turn and sprint north alongside the fence. Now I realize why I didn’t give up on the obstacle course, why I worked so hard to win. I want to be the leader of the Pioneers. For some reason it’s important to me. Maybe because I think I can do a better job than Hawke. Or maybe because I simply want to impress the others. It sounds a little conceited, I guess, but that’s the way I feel.

I’m more than thirty feet ahead by the time I reach the northeastern corner. The headquarters comes back into view, and I can see Hawke and the other Pioneers standing by the finish line. But just as I make the final turn, I feel horrific pain in both of my legs. My knee joints feel like they’ve caught fire, and my footpads sting as if I’ve just stomped on a bed of nails. The pain is so fierce I lose control of my motors. My legs lock up and my momentum tips me over. My Pioneer careens into the mud.

The pain keeps tormenting me as Zia turns the corner and rushes toward the finish line. For a moment I suspect she used her welding torch on me, but when I run a diagnostic check on my systems I see that everything’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with my footpads or the motors in my leg joints. Then I realize that I’m feeling pain only in the places where I installed the wireless sensors. When I turn off the antenna that’s receiving the signals from the sensors, the pain disappears.

I get back on my footpads and start running again, but Zia has already won the race. What she did was very clever. She must’ve intercepted my sensors’ signals, figured out their frequency, and then transmitted a barrage of radio noise on the same channel. Basically, she hijacked my wireless nervous system to deliver a burst of pain to my circuits.

By the time I cross the finish line, Hawke is already congratulating Zia. For a moment I consider complaining to the general, but I know it won’t do any good. I can’t prove that Zia cheated. And besides, it’s as much my own fault as hers. Shannon had warned me, back in the gym, about the dangers of leaving myself vulnerable. But I didn’t listen.

“We have a winner,” Hawke says. “I’m promoting Zia Allawi to lieutenant. She’s now in charge of the Pioneers, at least when I’m not around. And I’m promoting Adam Armstrong to sergeant. He’ll be the second-in-command.” He gives me a magnanimous look, as if he’s doing me a great favor. Then he looks at his watch. “All right, in thirty minutes one of Sigma’s spy satellites is going to pass over Colorado, so we better get back inside the base. We’ll regroup in the briefing room at sixteen hundred hours.”

He nods at Zia, then marches toward his men. Zia salutes him as he walks away. Then she turns her turret and aims her camera at me. “You heard the general, Armstrong! Get the others in line!”

I have no choice. I have to obey her.

From: The National Security Adviser

The White House, Washington, DC

To: General Calvin Hawke

Commander, Pioneer Base

Cal, I have more information on the firefight at Tatishchevo Missile Base, so I’ve ordered Colonel Peterson to fly to Colorado and deliver this message to you. The news isn’t good.

The incident began last night just outside Tatishchevo’s eastern gate. The Russian soldiers assigned to that area came under heavy fire from the base. At least sixty of Sigma’s driverless tanks emerged from the gate and advanced east along the highway that leads to the city of Saratov. The attack caught the Russians by surprise. When the unmanned tanks roared out of the base with their guns blazing, the troops panicked and retreated into the woods.

Before the Russian commanders could organize a counterattack, a convoy of three trucks sped down the highway from Saratov, heading for the base. The trucks entered Tatishchevo, and then the tanks immediately pulled back behind the eastern gate and reassumed their defensive positions. The attack was apparently a diversion. Sigma launched it just to clear the highway so the trucks could get into the missile base.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. Russian investigators have figured out who was driving the trucks and what was inside them. Twelve hours before the firefight there was an incident at the Russian army’s bioweapons laboratory, five hundred miles northeast of Tatishchevo. A group of terrorists, most likely from Chechnya, broke into the lab and captured a large supply of highly lethal anthrax bacteria.

The Chechens also stole equipment that mixes the bacteria into an aerosol spray, making it easy to spread the germs over a large area. Witnesses at the bioweapons lab said the terrorists escaped in three Ural tractor-trailer trucks. That matches the description of the vehicles that entered Tatishchevo.

So it looks like you were right when you said Sigma’s preferred strategy is to kill off the human race without destroying our machines. Spreading anthrax over our cities would accomplish that goal quite efficiently. The Russian army is pushing hard to attack Tatishchevo before Sigma can release the germs. We’ve given them the results of our analyses, all the studies showing that Sigma could easily launch its nuclear missiles long before our own missiles could hit the computer lab, but the Russians are growing impatient. If we want to pursue the Pioneer option, you’ll need to get your team ready soon. Even two weeks may be too long. We may have to load the Pioneers on a flight to Russia in just a few days.

In the meantime, we need to be very careful. The attack on the bioweapons lab shows that Sigma can persuade people to carry out tasks that the AI can’t do by itself. It looks like Sigma made contact with the terrorists through its communications satellites, which give the AI access to the Internet and the telephone networks.

And there’s evidence that Sigma has used this access to hack into the computer systems of several major banks. The AI has apparently stolen millions of dollars from the banks, electronically transferring the money to its own hidden accounts, and now it can offer these funds to terrorists and mercenaries in exchange for their cooperation. The terrorists have no idea they’re dealing with an AI because it can mimic human speech so well.

Worst of all, I’m worried that Sigma may be using human allies to help it find Pioneer Base. Just a few minutes ago I got a report from the FBI field office in New York. The parents of Ryan Boyd, the student at Yorktown High School who was once Adam Armstrong’s best friend, have reported the boy missing. Ryan disappeared last night while he was socializing with his friends behind Yorktown High School. His friends say he stepped into the woods to relieve himself, but he never returned. The FBI has assigned a task force to search for Ryan, but they have no good leads.

I think we have to assume the worst: that someone allied with Sigma kidnapped the boy to find out where Armstrong is. I strongly recommend that you question Adam about this right away. If he told Ryan the location of Pioneer Base, you may have to evacuate the facility.

I’m sorry to deliver so much bad news in one message. God bless you and the Pioneers.

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9685664301

DATE: 04/04/18

This is a transcript of a telephone conversation between the Sigma speech-synthesis program (S) and American ex-convict Richard Ramsey (R). The communications were transmitted via radio from Tatishchevo Missile Base to the Globus-1 satellite, then to the Verizon cell-phone network in Westchester County, New York.

S: Good afternoon. How’s the weather in Westchester?

R: Well, well. It’s my rich uncle again. How you doin’, Unc? I got that money order you sent me.

(Voice analysis confirms that the speaker is Richard Ramsey.)

S: Please tell me what you’ve learned since our last conversation. I’ve encrypted this call, so you can speak freely.

R: I’ve been busy, Unc, real busy. First off, I found Ryan Boyd, the football player. I grabbed him last night while he was hanging out with his buddies. He’s in my basement now, handcuffed to the pipes.

S: Has he been cooperative?

R: Oh yeah. He’s so scared, he can’t stop talking. We had a nice chat about Adam Armstrong.

S: What did Ryan tell you?

R: He saw Adam just a few days ago. They had a conversation in the high-school parking lot. It was a sad little scene, Unc. Adam’s dying, you know.

S: Yes, I’m aware of that.

R: But he told Ryan something interesting. Adam said he was going to a new school out west. And he said he was going to make lots of new friends there.

(Conclusion: This is a possible reference to the Pioneer Project.)

S: He said, “Out west”?

R: I know. It’s a little vague. I grilled Ryan for a couple of hours, trying to get more out of him, but his story didn’t change. Adam just said “out west.” Nothing else.

S: In this context, would you assume that “out west” means the western half of the continental United States?

R: Hey, I’m no expert on geography. I get lost just driving through Yonkers. (Laughter.) But yeah, I’d say that’s right. West of the Mississippi.

(Conclusion: The search for the Pioneer Project should be focused on the western United States. The orbits of my surveillance satellites will be adjusted accordingly.)

S: Do you have anything else to report?

R: As a matter of fact, I do. That girl you told me about, Brittany Taylor? The cheerleader who ran off to New York City? I found out that Adam’s obsessed with her. He asked Ryan if he knew where she was.

S: Did Ryan know?

R: He said he didn’t but he guessed she might be in Harlem. So early this morning I left him in my basement and drove into the city. I used to do business with the gangs in Harlem, you know.

S: Business?

R: Yeah, they used to call me the aspirin. If some guy was giving the gangs a headache, I made the guy go away. (Laughter.) Anyway, I found some old friends and showed them Brittany’s picture, and one of them recognized her. He’d seen her on West 134th Street, outside an abandoned building that’s full of runaways.

S: Did you visit the building?

R: Hey, that’s what you’re paying me for, right? I spent two hours watching the place from across the street. Finally, just before noon, she came outside. I watched her go to the corner store and buy a Snickers bar for her breakfast.

S: You’re certain it was her?

R: No doubt about it. She’s been living on the street for a while, so she don’t look as good as she used to. Her hair’s a mess and her face is all splotchy. But it’s her, all right.

(Conclusion: there’s an opportunity to abduct Brittany Taylor. In all likelihood she doesn’t know where Adam Armstrong is, but capturing her might prove useful in other ways.)

S: I want you to bring Brittany to your home. She can stay in your basement with Ryan.

R: Whoa, hold on, Unc. I’m not running a summer camp here.

S: You won’t have to keep them for long. Only until you finish questioning them.

R: And then what happens?

(I must adjust my speech-synthesis program. I can communicate more effectively with this human if I speak the way he does.)

S: You’re going to make Ryan and Brittany go away. Like the headaches. Make them disappear.

(Pause)

R: What’s going on, Unc? What do you got against these kids?

S: I’m prepared to increase your payment. I’ll send you another $30,000.

R: Sorry, but thirty grand ain’t enough. Not for what you’re talking about now.

S: How much do you need? Please name a figure.

R: This is serious business. We’re talking at least a hundred grand.

S: I’ll wire $50,000 now to your bank account. You’ll get another $50,000 after you send me proof that the job is done.

(Longer pause)

R: You’re pretty coldhearted, Unc.

S: Do we have an agreement?

R: Just send the money.

CHAPTER 14

General Hawke scowls at me from behind the desk in his office.

“How could you do this, Armstrong? Didn’t you sign a confidentiality agreement on your first visit to Pioneer Base? Didn’t I make it clear that you were forbidden to tell anyone where you were?”

“Yes, but—”

“Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ The ‘sir’ should be part of your programming by now. It should be automatic.”

If I had a face, I’d scowl back at him. But I only have my camera. “Yes, sir. I didn’t tell Ryan where Pioneer Base is. I didn’t mention Colorado. I just said ‘out west.’ Just those two words.”

“That’s bad enough. Those two words are gonna make life difficult for us.”

He picks up a document from a stack of papers on his desk. I focus my camera on the top of the page and see a couple of lines obviously written with a typewriter:

From: The National Security Adviser

The White House, Washington, DC

This must be the memo about Ryan’s kidnapping. Hawke waves it in the air. “Sigma is a relentless enemy, Armstrong. It’s going to change the orbits of its surveillance satellites and have them spend more time looking at this part of the country. That means we’ll have less time to train outside. And in our current situation, that’s a very bad thing.”

He’s trying to make me feel guilty, and it’s working. I feel bad about putting my fellow Pioneers in danger. But I feel even worse about what happened to Ryan. A twinge runs through my circuits as I retrieve the memory of our last meeting and the painful conversation in the Yorktown High parking lot. I should’ve never gone looking for him.

“I’m sorry, sir. It was a stupid mistake.”

“Did you make any other mistakes? Talk to anyone else while you were in Yorktown Heights?”

“No, sir. No one but my parents.”

Still scowling, Hawke stands up and goes to the file cabinet behind his desk. “You should’ve been more careful. You knew Sigma was after you. It had already tried to kill you at the Unicorp lab.” He opens the file cabinet’s top drawer and slips the typewritten memo into one of the folders there. Then he slams the drawer closed and locks it with a small silver key. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about the other Pioneers. Sigma doesn’t know their identities, so it can’t go after their friends.”

He shoves the key into his pants pocket and returns to his desk. I expect him to continue chewing me out, but instead he starts leafing through his stack of papers. There are more typewritten memos in the stack, plus several satellite photos of Tatishchevo Missile Base.

“Uh, sir? Are the police looking for Ryan?”

He nods. “Definitely. The police, the FBI, they’ve all involved in the search.”

“Do you think they’ll find him?”

“Don’t worry. They’re doing everything they can. I’ll let you know as soon as I get any news.” He raises his head for a moment and glances at my camera lens. Then he goes back to studying his papers. “That’s all for now, Armstrong. You’re dismissed.”

Raising my right arm, I salute the general, then turn around and head for the door. As I leave his office, though, I get the feeling that Hawke is hiding something. He doesn’t think the police will find Ryan. I could hear the resignation in his voice. He thinks my friend is as good as dead.

A surge of fury invades my circuits—I want to bolt out of Pioneer Base and start running east, back to Yorktown Heights. I want to find the traitor who’s working with Sigma, the thug who kidnapped Ryan Boyd. I want to pound his face and stomp on his knees and clamp my steel hands around his neck. I can picture it so clearly: his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his eyes widening as I crush his throat. In an instant, my mind draws a thousand gory images, each as vivid as the worst scenes in a horror movie. Are you scared, tough guy? Had enough?

The emotion is so strong that for a couple of seconds I lose track of the data coming from my sensors. When I come back to reality, I’m standing in the corridor outside Hawke’s office with my hands locked into fists. Another Pioneer is just a few feet away, training its camera on me. The number 5 is stamped on its torso. It’s Marshall Baxley.

“Everything okay, Adam?” He’s modified his synthesized voice, making it sound fancy and British, like he’s an actor in a Shakespeare play. “You seem perplexed.”

“No, I’m fine.” But that’s a lie. The truth is, I’m a little freaked out by the explosion of rage I just felt. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

“Are you sure?” Marshall moves a step closer, his footpads clanging. “I see you just came out of the general’s office. Was Hawke giving you a hard time?”

I’m starting to wonder whether it’s a coincidence that I found Marshall here. Was he spying on me? Eavesdropping on my conversation with Hawke? I wouldn’t put it past him. “No, we were talking about the weather.”

He chuckles. It makes me jealous, his ability to synthesize laughter. He does it so easily. “You’re funny, Adam. You’re one of the most amusing robots I know. Where are you going now?”

“Why do you care?”

He places his mechanical hands on the sides of his torso, just above where his legs are attached. It’s a posture of outrage, hands on hips. “I was trying to be friendly, that’s all. We have an hour to kill before the next training exercise, so I thought I’d invite you to hang out in my room for a while.”

“Hang out?”

“You know, drink beer, smoke cigarettes. Oh, wait a minute.” He slaps one of his hands against his turret, as if suddenly remembering something. “Well, we can talk at least. That’s something we can still do.”

“What about your friend Zia? Will she be there too?”

“Oh Lord, I wish you two would stop bickering.”

“Bickering? She’s insane.”

“Look, Adam, we don’t have a lot of choices for friends here. We take what we can get. And Zia’s not so bad. I find her fascinating, actually. She’s so ferocious.”

“So why do you need me? Why don’t you just hang out with her?”

Marshall lets out a synthesized sigh. “All right, you want the truth?” He moves another step closer and lowers the volume of his speakers. “Zia can get tiresome after a while. She spends way too much time talking about Hawke. It’s like she has a crush on the man. That’s a disgusting thought, isn’t it?” He synthesizes a gagging noise. “And when she’s not talking about Hawke, she likes to lecture me on military strategy. She downloaded all the Army’s files on every war ever fought. You should hear her go on about World War II. It’s like listening to the History Channel.”

I have to admit, this is interesting information. Although Marshall may be a weasel, at least he’s entertaining. I’m still angry at him for siding with Zia this morning, but maybe I should let it slide. He’s right about one thing: we don’t have a lot of choices for friends here.

Marshall raises one of his arms and points down the hall toward his room. “So are you coming or not?” His fancy British voice quavers a bit. It’s a subtle change, but my acoustic sensor detects it. I realize that behind all his jokes and cleverness, Marshall is lonely. He’s dying for someone to talk to. “Zia won’t be there, but DeShawn said he’d stop by. Both of you like football, so we can talk about that. I’ll do my best to pretend to be interested.”

That clinches it. I definitely want to talk to DeShawn. We have more in common than an interest in football. “Okay, I’m in.”

“A wise choice, Mr. Armstrong.” Marshall claps my torso. “Let’s make some trouble.”

Marshall stops at his door and raises his right hand to a keypad mounted on the wall. Swiftly tapping his mechanical fingers on the keys, he enters a six-digit password that unlocks the door. But as it swings open he lets out a synthesized yelp of surprise. Pioneer 6 stands just inside the doorway.

“What up, peeps?” DeShawn telescopes his arms, spreading them wide. “What took you so long?”

“Well, well. I see you’ve made yourself at home.” Marshall is trying to act casual, but I can tell he’s annoyed. His British accent sounds strained. “May I ask how you managed to get into my room?”

“It was easy. I looked up your birth date in the Pioneer Base library. You couldn’t think of a better password than that?”

“Ah. How foolish of me.” Marshall slaps his turret again. “It was force of habit, I suppose. Until recently I had trouble remembering numbers. But that’s not a problem anymore, is it?”

“You should use your circuits to generate a random number. You can make it as long as you want, a hundred digits, two hundred. Then no one will ever guess it.”

I stride forward and point at the keypad. “But that would be inefficient. It would take forever to punch in such a long number.”

“How about transmitting the password wirelessly instead?” DeShawn points at the keypad too. His robotic voice is full of enthusiasm. “We could add a transceiver to the locking mechanism. Then you could send it a radio signal with the encoded password.”

I focus my camera on DeShawn’s turret, wishing he had a face so I could see his expression. He’s obviously a tech geek. Just like me, he spent years trapped in a wheelchair, paralyzed and helpless and bored out of his mind, and now I realize we both had the same strategy for coping with it. DeShawn became an expert on software and computers and all the other gadgets that make life tolerable for someone with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As I stare at his turret I feel a pulse of gladness in my circuits. We’re even more alike than I’d suspected.

I turn on my wireless system and connect to the Pioneer Base library. Then I scroll through the databases until I find a file on transceiver electronics. “Okay, I see a couple of options,” I say. “We can install a circuit board with—”

“Slow down, boys.” Marshall snakes one of his arms around my torso and the other around DeShawn’s. “I’m not in the mood to reprogram anything right now.” He guides us into his room and shuts the door behind us. “Let’s just have a little conversation, shall we?”

Marshall’s room looks a lot like mine. There’s no furniture. The room is empty except for the recharging station and Marshall’s evil twin, a motionless spare Pioneer with the label 5A stamped on its torso. But the walls are covered with posters. They look like the kind of posters you’d see in a high-school English classroom. Each shows a black-and-white photograph of a famous poet and a quote from one of his or her poems.

Beneath a picture of Emily Dickinson is the quote, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Beneath Walt Whitman is the line, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” One poster, though, is set apart from all the others, tacked in the exact center of the far wall. It shows a man with a grotesquely large head and a right hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. This man, I realize, is Marshall’s hero, Joseph Merrick—the Elephant Man. The quote below his picture is from the poem Marshall gave me on the night before I became a Pioneer: “I would be measured by the soul; the mind’s the standard of the man.”

I think of the Super Bowl posters on the walls of my own room. I wonder if Marshall, like me, needs reminders of his former life. “Cool posters,” I say. “Did you bring them here? From your home, I mean?”

Marshall waves his steel hand in a dismissive way. “Yes, they’re old things. Getting wrinkled, I’m afraid. But it’s better than leaving the walls bare.” He turns his turret toward DeShawn, then back to me. “Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way of refreshments. All I can offer is the electricity from my recharging station.”

DeShawn holds up both his hands, splaying the fingers. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m full up.”

“How about you, Adam? Care to top off your batteries?”

“No, I’m full too.”

“Ah, too bad. It’s an excellent vintage of electric current with a truly intoxicating voltage.” Marshall laughs, and once again my circuits crackle with envy. “Tell me something, Mr. Armstrong. Back in the days when you were flesh and blood, did you ever get drunk?”

I turn my turret clockwise, then counter. “Never got the chance. I was in a wheelchair by the time I was twelve.”

“Same with me,” DeShawn says. “But my mom let me have a sip of beer once. Tasted nasty.”

A synthesized “tsk-tsk” comes out of Marshall’s speakers. “What a shame. You boys have led such sheltered lives. You’ve never had the unique pleasure of downing a bottle of Southern Comfort stolen from your mother’s liquor cabinet.”

I retrieve an image from my files, another memory from the night before my procedure. I remember Marshall lying on my bed, resting his deformed head on the mattress and talking about his childhood. “It wasn’t really a pleasure, was it?” I ask. “Getting drunk?”

“Well, there were a few moments of giddiness, at least at the beginning. But you’re right. In the end it wasn’t fun. I was drinking alone in the woods behind our house. That was one of my hiding places.”

“Hiding places? What were you hiding from?”

Marshall extends his left arm until his hand almost touches the Elephant Man poster. “In the small town where I grew up, most of the people were decent. They treated me with Christian charity and kindness. But there was a limit to their sympathy. In general, they preferred that I keep myself hidden.”

I look again at the poster, noting all the similarities between the photo of Joseph Merrick and my memory of Marshall’s human body. After several milliseconds of thought, I come to a conclusion: DeShawn and I were lucky. Being trapped in a wheelchair was paradise compared to what Marshall must’ve gone through.

The room falls silent. Marshall retracts his arm. We aim our cameras at each other, but neither of us speaks. I don’t know what to say.

Then DeShawn breaks the silence. “What you said before, Marsh? About the giddiness? I know something about that.”

Marshall turns his turret toward him. “Don’t tell me you got tipsy from that sip of beer your mother gave you.”

“Nah, this is something else. Something I discovered just yesterday.” DeShawn taps his fingers against his torso’s armor, pointing at the spot where his neuromorphic circuits are. “I was playing around with my files, trying to see how fast I could perform some complex calculations. And then by accident I activated a pathway I didn’t know was there. That’s what caused the giddiness.”

“Really?” Marshall trains his camera up and down, giving DeShawn a careful once-over. “This is intriguing. Exactly how giddy were you?”

“It only lasted a hundredth of a second, but it was pretty intense. The pathway must have some strong connections to the positive emotions—you know, happiness, delight, that kind of thing. I felt joyful, on top of the world. Like I’d just won the lottery or something.”

Now I aim my camera at DeShawn, studying him just as carefully as Marshall did. I remember the sensations I felt a few days ago when I went into sleep mode and dreamed of my mother. DeShawn’s discovery is better, though. He’s talking about a shortcut for altering his emotions. “How did you do it? Where was the pathway you activated?”

“It’s in the same folder where the sensory functions are. Here, I’ll show you.”

An instant later I receive a radio message from DeShawn detailing the exact location of the pathway in my electronics. To activate it, all I need to do is send a thought down those circuits. I’m eager to give it a try, but also a little wary. “Were there any aftereffects?” I ask. “Any permanent changes to your electronics?”

DeShawn lifts his steel shoulders in a shrug. “Sure, there were changes. But our circuitry is changing all the time. After every experience we make new connections.”

“But were the changes good or bad?”

“It didn’t hurt me. But if you’re worried about it, you don’t have to—”

Marshall interrupts him by clanging his hands together. The noise echoes against the walls. “I’m not worried, DeShawn. Send me the same message you just sent to Adam.”

DeShawn turns on his radio again and transmits the message. “Here you go.”

Marshall folds his arms across his torso. He’s clearly reading the message and inspecting the pathway. “Well, it looks simple enough. And God knows, I could use a little giddiness right now.” He raises his right hand and curls the steel fingers, pretending to hold a glass. Then he brings the hand toward his turret, like a man about to take a drink. “Cheers!”

Marshall’s torso shudders as he activates the pathway. I watch him for several milliseconds. Then I push my fears aside and do the same.

I feel a rush of elation. It’s Christmas, it’s my birthday, it’s Super Bowl Sunday. The New York Giants have just won Super Bowl XLVI and all my friends are cheering. Ryan Boyd picks me up by the waist and carries me around our living room. Brittany Taylor does a handstand and falls to the carpet, laughing. Her eyes are blue one moment, grayish-green the next.

The joy grows so fierce that it’s almost unbearable. And then, after exactly eleven milliseconds, it shuts off. The emotion doesn’t fade; it vanishes instantly. For a moment I’m distraught. I feel abandoned and empty. I want to activate the pathway again, right now.

But I don’t do it. There’s a reason the elation disappeared so abruptly. The extreme emotion must’ve tripped some kind of self-protection circuit. The bliss was too strong. Strong enough to drive you crazy.

I need another few milliseconds to compose myself. Then I turn my turret toward DeShawn. “Wow, you were right. That was intense.”

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he aims his camera at Marshall. I turn that way too and see Pioneer 5 thrashing. Marshall swings one arm to the left and the other to the right, as if whipping an invisible enemy. I stride backward, getting out of the way. “Marshall! What’s wrong?”

I don’t think he can hear me. He’s flailing his arms the same way Jenny did right after her procedure. He’s lost control of his Pioneer.

DeShawn steps backward too. “Stop it, Marshall!” he shouts. “Disengage your locomotion circuits!”

Marshall keeps flailing. His right arm slices the air and slams into the wall, shredding two of the posters. I have to stop him before he hurts himself. I observe Marshall’s movements and calculate the safest way to restrain him. “I’m going in!” I yell at DeShawn. “Get ready to back me up!”

But just as I’m about to lunge across the room, Marshall stops thrashing. All at once he lowers and retracts his arms. His torso vibrates for a moment, then goes still.

“Marshall?” I take a step forward, still ready to restrain him if I have to. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He’s no longer speaking with an amused British accent. Marshall’s voice is monotone, truly robotic. I take another step toward him. “What happened? Did you activate the—”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

Now DeShawn steps forward. “Look, if there’s a problem, you should tell us. We still don’t understand how our circuits—”

“Please leave. Both of you.” Marshall raises his right arm and points at the door. “I want to be alone.”

I can tell that arguing with him won’t do any good. Activating the pathway clearly had a different effect on Marshall than it had on me or DeShawn. And he definitely doesn’t want to talk about it.

Reluctantly, I head for the door. A moment later I hear DeShawn’s footsteps clanging behind me. Just as I grasp the doorknob, though, Marshall lets out a synthesized sigh. I turn my turret around and see him waving good-bye at us.

“Sorry to be so inhospitable.” His voice softens. “I enjoyed your company very much.”

I wave back at him, flapping my mechanical hand. The gesture looks a little silly when performed by an eight-hundred-pound robot. But it works.

CHAPTER 15

The next morning the Pioneers learn how to fly. We take the freight elevator up to the surface again and march to the runway on the other side of the basin. There’s a hangar beside the runway, and through its open doors I see a helicopter, a UH-60 Black Hawk. Its weapon racks are loaded with a pair of Hellfire rockets, and a long antenna extends from the chopper’s tail. Zooming in on the antenna with my camera, I notice it’s connected to a neuromorphic control unit. A surge of excitement lights up my circuits. I picture myself soaring over the basin in the Black Hawk, maybe even launching one of its Hellfires.

But the helicopter isn’t ready for action. Its rotor blades are folded and tied down, and there are no soldiers in the hangar to prepare the aircraft for flight. Instead, all the soldiers are on the runway, standing in a circle. As we get closer I see what’s at the center of the circle: six miniature airplanes sitting on the tarmac.

They’re sleek and black, made of shiny fiberglass. Each has a five-foot wingspan and a three-foot-long fuselage containing a battery compartment and an electric motor. Hanging from the belly of each plane is a video camera, and at the tail is a long antenna. The planes look similar to ordinary remote-control models, the kind that hobbyists pilot from the ground using radios, but each fuselage has an extra compartment that’s wired to the motor and antenna. This compartment, I’m willing to bet, holds a neuromorphic control unit.

I feel a jolt of disappointment. We’re going to transfer our minds to model airplanes? That’s ridiculous. Those things aren’t weapons. They’re toys. Their top speed is maybe fifty miles per hour, and they’re too light to carry any guns or missiles. What’s the point of training in that thing? How in the world will it help us fight Sigma?

The soldiers step aside as we join the circle. The other Pioneers also seem puzzled by the miniature planes. Zia turns her turret to Marshall, who lifts his robotic arms in a shrug. I turn to Shannon and DeShawn, but neither says a word. (I don’t bother Jenny, who’s standing by herself as usual, silent and unapproachable.) Then General Hawke enters the circle and everyone salutes. The general halts beside the planes and points at the nearest one, which has the number 3 stamped on its fuselage. All the planes have numbers, just like us.

“This is an RQ-11 Raven,” Hawke says. “Our troops have used these small drones for surveillance in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat zones. The Ravens usually fly at an altitude of five hundred feet and send video images of the battlefield to our men on the ground, who steer the drones by remote control.” He crouches next to the plane and points at its fuselage. “We’ve modified these Ravens so they can carry a few extra pounds. We miniaturized the neuromorphic control unit and put a steel case around it to protect the circuits if the plane crashes. In today’s exercise my men will launch the Ravens, and then the Pioneers will wirelessly transfer themselves to the control units while the planes are in flight. All the information needed to fly the Ravens is already loaded in the units. Once you’re inside the planes, I’ll send you further instructions by radio.”

Hawke straightens up and steps away from the Ravens. “Before we start, are there any questions?”

I raise my hand. “Sir, could you explain the tactical advantages of attacking Sigma with this kind of aircraft?”

“Your question is premature, Armstrong. First you’re gonna learn how to fly the Ravens. Then we’ll discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Any other questions?” Hawke pauses, but no one else raises a hand. “All right, the commander goes first. Lieutenant Allawi?”

Zia steps forward. At the same time, one of Hawke’s soldiers picks up Raven Number 3, carries it outside the circle, and starts its motor, which whines and buzzes as it turns the plane’s propeller. I assume he’s going to set the plane on the runway for the takeoff, but instead the soldier flings it into the air. The Raven climbs at a steep angle, and within seconds it’s hundreds of feet above the ground. It may be just a miniature plane, but the takeoff is pretty cool.

“Okay, Allawi, you can transfer now,” Hawke says.

“Yes, sir!” Zia says, saluting him again. Then she turns on her data transmitter.

The general tilts his head back to gaze at the Raven, which looks like a tiny black cross against the sky. After half a minute he glances at Zia’s Pioneer, which powers down after it finishes transmitting its data. Hawke grabs a radio from his belt, holds it up to his mouth, and shouts, “Allawi, are you up there?”

There’s no answer at first. Hawke waits about ten seconds, then shouts into the radio again. “Please respond, Allawi. Are you all right?”

After five more seconds, her reply comes back. “Affirmative, sir. I’m piloting the Raven. Everything is functioning normally.”

The general seems relieved. He purses his lips and lets out a long breath. Then he turns to me. “You’re next, Armstrong.”

“Uh, sir? Could I launch the plane myself?”

Hawke cocks his head. “Have you already downloaded the instructions for the RQ-11?”

“No, sir, but I observed the soldier do it, and I can imitate him exactly. And it would be useful to practice launching the Ravens. Just in case we have to do it in the field.”

He thinks it over for a moment. “All right. Just don’t slam it into the ground. Believe it or not, each of those little planes costs fifty thousand dollars.”

I’m amazed he’s actually letting me do it. I stride toward the Ravens, pick up Number 1, and turn on its motor. The plane vibrates in my steel hand as I draw my arm back, readying for the throw. Then I hurl the Raven at a sixty-degree angle and it shoots right up into the sky. I watch it climb for a few seconds, then turn to the other Pioneers and do a little bow, tilting my torso forward.

Marshall and Jenny just stand there, but Shannon and DeShawn applaud, their fingers clinking.

“Nice pass, Armstrong,” Shannon says. “But where’s your receiver?”

“I’m my own receiver. It’s every quarterback’s dream.” I glance at Hawke, who gives me a nod, and then I turn on my data transmitter.

I feel the weird stretching sensation again. It’s even more disorienting than when I transferred myself to the Humvee, because now I’m transmitting my data over a much greater distance. The radio waves from my antenna spread in all directions, sweeping across the floor of the basin and rising hundreds of feet into the air. In a millionth of a second they reach the antenna at the tail of my Raven, but the signal is weak. Because the waves have spread across such a huge area, it takes longer for all my data packets to reassemble in the Raven’s control unit. For nearly a minute I’m sprawled across the Colorado sky, my mind arcing dizzily above the Rocky Mountains.

And then I’m inside the Raven. I connect to the plane’s video camera and see the mountainous landscape below. The Raven also has an acoustic sensor, and when I link to it, I hear the buzz of the motor and the whistling of the wind. Last, I connect to the plane’s accelerometers, which monitor the four forces acting on me: gravity, lift, thrust, and drag. I’m perfectly balanced between these forces, and the feeling is incredible, like riding the world’s best roller coaster. I retrieve the instructions for the RQ-11 and switch the plane from remote-control flight to autonomous operation. Now I’m flying!

There are no flaps on the Raven’s wings, so I have to rely on the rudder and the elevator at the plane’s tail. First I test the rudder, turning the plane to the left and right. Then I angle the elevator upward, which lowers the tail and lifts the plane’s nose. An instant later I rev up the motor, and the Raven goes into a steep, thrilling climb. A strong wind from the west buffets and jostles me, but I tweak the controls and keep aiming for the clouds. I level out at two thousand feet above the ground, then point the video camera downward so I can get a good view of the countryside. The basin is directly below, a muddy brown bowl with a snow-white rim. All around it are the endless peaks of the Rockies.

Then I get an incoming radio signal, encrypted for security reasons. My circuits decode the message, which is a voice communication from General Hawke.

“You okay, Armstrong?”

Adjusting the lens of the plane’s camera, I zoom in on the general and the Pioneers. They look so tiny down there.

“Big affirmative, sir,” I reply, transmitting my synthesized voice over the radio channel. “This is the best day of my life.”

“Take it easy with the aerobatics. If you lose control at that altitude, you’ll hit the ground pretty hard.”

I focus the camera on the ridges surrounding the basin. Falling on the snow-covered ground probably wouldn’t be so bad, but there are also sections of exposed rock on the slopes. Then another worry occurs to me. “Sir, I think I’ve gone too high. I can see for miles around, and that means anyone down there can see me too.”

I expect Hawke to get angry, but his voice stays calm. “It’s a risk, but a small one. From this far away, you look like a bird. And we’ve restricted public access to the surrounding area.”

I start to descend anyway. Better safe than sorry. Lowering the elevator, I dip the plane’s nose and cut back on the motor. I see Zia’s Raven five hundred feet below me, flying in a wide circle. A quarter-mile to the west I spot a third plane climbing into the sky. From far away, they really do look like birds.

That’s when I get my first inkling of Hawke’s plan for attacking Sigma. I reopen the radio channel to the general. “Sir? What would the Ravens look like on a radar screen? They’d look more like birds than planes, wouldn’t they?”

There’s a pause of several seconds. When Hawke finally comes back on the radio, he sounds amused. “That’s another premature question, Armstrong.”

“But am I right, sir? Have I identified one of the Raven’s tactical advantages?”

“We’ll talk about it later. Now stop bothering me. I have to get three more Pioneers into the air.”

I continue descending. Turning the rudder to the right, I go into a slow, clockwise corkscrew. Over the next fifteen minutes the other Pioneers zoom up from the runway, one by one. Pretty soon we’re all circling the airspace over the basin. It’s an amazing sight.

I don’t want it to end, but the charge in my Raven’s battery will only last for another fifteen minutes. I descend below eight hundred feet, which is the height of the ridges around the basin, and now I can no longer see the mountains beyond. Then I get another radio message from General Hawke. He’s addressing all the Pioneers at once.

“So far, so good,” he says. “Now here comes the hard part. I want all of you to turn off your motors.”

After a few seconds of silence, Shannon’s synthesized voice comes over the radio. “Could you repeat that, sir? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

“You heard me right, Gibbs. Shut down your motors.”

“But, sir?” This is DeShawn’s voice. “How will we—”

“You’re gonna glide the rest of the way down. All the necessary instructions are in your control units.”

He’s right. According to the instructions, the Raven’s design—long wings, sleek fuselage—makes it ideal for gliding. We can land the planes without power if we spiral down to the basin, using the rudder for steering and the elevator to control the descent. “Should we land on the runway, sir?” I ask.

“Negative. I want you to transfer back to your Pioneers while you’re still gliding. First you need to descend to about three hundred feet to get within radio range. Then you have to keep the Ravens circling in the air until you complete the data transfer. After that, the planes will revert back to remote-control operation and my men will steer them to the landing zone.”

“Excuse me, General?” This is Marshall’s voice, with its computer-generated British accent. “May I ask why we’re practicing this particular maneuver?”

“No, you may not. Are your circuits malfunctioning, Baxley? Didn’t you hear what I told Armstrong? No premature questions.”

“My apologies, sir. I didn’t—”

“All right, enough chatter. Cut your motors right now. I’ll give a nice, shiny medal to whoever makes it down first.”

For a moment I feel sorry for Marshall, but not because Hawke chewed him out. I feel sorry for him because he doesn’t see what’s obvious. The reason for today’s training exercise becomes absolutely clear as soon as I turn off my motor. The electric buzz ceases and the propeller stops spinning and the only sound my acoustic sensor picks up is the whistling of the wind. The Raven is flying silently now. If it were nighttime, the plane would be invisible and untrackable. It could glide right into a Russian missile base and no one would be the wiser.

Without the thrust from the propeller the Raven lurches earthward, but after a couple of seconds it settles into a glide path. I’m five hundred feet above the ground, and at this rate of descent I’ll be within radio range of my Pioneer in half a minute. But then I see another Raven streak past me. It’s Number 3, Zia’s plane, and it’s diving fast. She clearly wants to be the first Pioneer on the ground. She’s so hungry for General Hawke’s approval that she’ll risk smashing herself to pieces. Luckily, she pulls out of the dive at the last second and starts gliding in a wide corkscrew above her Pioneer.

But she made a mistake. Her corkscrew is too wide, almost five hundred feet across. My circuits do the math: although she’s only two hundred feet above the ground, she’s more than three hundred feet from her Pioneer. I can get closer than that. I know I can.

I tilt my Raven downward and go into a dive. This is insane, but I can’t stop myself. My Raven’s nose points directly at my Pioneer and I’m accelerating like crazy. My camera shows Hawke’s soldiers looking up at me and scattering across the runway. The general himself doesn’t budge, but he frowns in disapproval. If I survive this stunt, he’ll probably demote me.

When I’m just a hundred feet from the ground I pull out of the dive and turn sharply right, trying to make my corkscrew as tight as possible. The Raven wobbles and almost flips over, but I manage to keep the plane flying. At the same time, I turn on my data transmitter. I’m a lot closer to my Pioneer than Zia is to hers, and that means I can transfer my data a lot faster.

Although she started her transfer several seconds before I did, I finish first. Back in my Pioneer, I take a clanging step toward the general. My Raven still circles overhead, now operated by Hawke’s soldiers. “Sir, I believe you said something about a medal?”

Hawke is still frowning. “That was stupid.”

“Sorry, sir. Guess I have a risk-taking personality.”

“It’s stupid to take risks if you don’t have a good reason. And I don’t give out medals for stupidity.”

While he glares at me, I hear clanking to my left. Zia’s Pioneer comes to life and steps forward. She salutes the general but doesn’t say anything. She knows I beat her this time, but she won’t acknowledge it.

Hawke looks at his watch. “All right, let’s wrap things up. One of Sigma’s satellites is going to pass overhead soon.” He points at Zia as he marches off. “Allawi, make sure everyone gets inside the base by twelve hundred hours.”

One by one, the other Pioneers leave their Ravens and come back to earth. Jenny stays in the air for a few extra minutes, but then she comes down too and we all head for the freight elevator. Zia marches beside me as we cross the basin, and for a second I consider saying something to needle her. But she speaks first. “You’re a show-off, Armstrong.”

“And you’re a sore loser.”

“You think this is a game? You think we’re playing around here?” She stops walking and points at me with her right arm, the one that holds her acetylene torch. “That’s the problem with you. You think everything’s a joke.”

This is unfair. Maybe I’m not as serious as Zia, but I’m not the jokester of Pioneer Base. Marshall’s the comedian, and he’s Zia’s best friend. I step toward her, ready to have it out. “You know, Zia, there’s something I don’t understand. You’ve been nasty to me since the first moment I saw you. What do you have against me? I never did anything to you.”

She turns her turret, first clockwise, then counter. “No, you’re wrong about that. You’re careless. And it’s hurting all of us.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not hurting anyone.”

“Oh yeah? What about the satellites?” She points a steel finger at the sky. “Why do you think so many of them are looking for us? It’s because you screwed up and told your high-school buddy about this place.”

What? How does Zia know about that? My conversation with Hawke about the “out west” comment was supposed to be confidential. “How did you—”

“I know a lot of things. So you better watch your step.”

Then she strides away, leaving me more confused than ever.

We have some free time in the afternoon, so I go looking for Hawke. I find him in one of Pioneer Base’s corridors, running off to another meeting, and I ask if he’s heard any news about Ryan. He says no, but he assures me that the police and the FBI are on the case. For a moment I consider asking him if he mentioned this subject to Zia, but I don’t. I think I know how she got the information. Marshall must’ve eavesdropped on my conversation with Hawke and passed the tidbit along.

Afterward, I stop by my bedroom to recharge. While juicing up I practice the transfer process, wirelessly sending my data to Pioneer 1A—my evil twin, standing motionless in the corner—and then back to Pioneer 1. But I still hate doing this. It still makes me nauseous, so I cut the practice session short as soon as I finish recharging. Then I leave my twin behind and head for Dad’s laboratory. I take an envelope with me, gripping it gently between my steel fingers.

It’s my letter to Mom. I finally worked up the courage to write it. It’s a short letter, just eight sentences. I scribbled it in pencil because that seemed more personal than printing it out. Now I’m going to ask Dad to send it to the secret location where the Army’s hiding her.

When I get to the lab, though, I see a soldier guarding the door. He says Dad’s talking with General Hawke. Then he sees the envelope in my hand and offers to give it to Dad when the meeting’s over. But I say no thanks. I don’t want the soldier to touch it.

As I head back to my room I realize I’ve seen Dad only four times in the past week, and each time we spent only a few minutes together. I know he’s very busy now—he’s working on the plans for the Tatishchevo mission—but it still seems unfair. Before I became a Pioneer we spent hours together every day, chatting about computers or math or football while he changed my clothes and prepared my meals and took me to the bathroom and put me to bed. Now, of course, I don’t need as much assistance. I’m a low-maintenance robot instead of a high-maintenance human. But I miss our talks.

When I return to my room and open the door, I get a big surprise. Another Pioneer stands next to my evil twin. It’s Pioneer 2, Jenny Harris.

Dumbfounded, I step inside and let the door close behind me. Jenny has avoided everyone for the past six days, so I don’t understand what she’s doing here. Did she wander into my room by mistake? No, that can’t be right. She would’ve known she was in the wrong place as soon as she saw the Super Bowl posters on the walls.

I put my letter to Mom on the bookshelf next to my comics. Then I take a cautious step forward. “Uh, Jenny? Are you all right?”

She turns her turret, aiming her camera at me. “Yes, I’m fine.”

I wait for her to say something else, but she just stands there, as motionless as my evil twin.

“So, uh, what’s up?” I ask. “Do you want to talk or something?”

Several seconds go by. I’m about to repeat the question when she extends her right arm and points at one of my Super Bowl posters. “I recognize that,” she says. “It was in your memories.”

She’s pointing at my Super Bowl XLVI poster, the one with the drawing of Eli Manning and the photograph of me and Ryan. Jenny must’ve seen it when I was inside her Pioneer. It makes sense that she’d remember this particular image, because it’s one of my most powerful memories, so strong that it shapes a big portion of my electronics. I guess it was powerful enough to leave an impression on Jenny’s circuits too.

I’m agitated now. What else does Jenny know about me? How many other images from my past were copied onto her circuits?

After a moment she points at another Super Bowl poster, the last one. “I recognize those drawings too.” She gestures at the three portraits I drew, lined up left to right on the poster. “That’s Brittany, right?”

This is too much. It’s too personal. I need to stop this right now. “Look, Jenny, I’m confused. For a whole week you wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t talk to anyone. And now you come in here and—”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what’s going on?” My synthesized voice is loud and angry.

She lowers her arm and strides toward me. She doesn’t stop until she’s less than a yard away. “I was scared, Adam. Scared and confused and depressed. Every time I looked at myself, I was horrified. I couldn’t think straight.”

“Why didn’t you say something? My dad could’ve helped you.”

“No, not really. He could’ve adjusted my circuits, I guess. And maybe that would’ve made me feel a little better. But he couldn’t solve the real problem. He couldn’t make me human again.”

My anger fades. I’m starting to understand. I remember what I did right after I became a Pioneer—how I stormed out of the laboratory and down the corridors until I found my dead body still lying inside the scanner. I remember the aching loss.

“But you know what?” Jenny adds. “I feel better today. Maybe because we went flying. I guess it gave me a different perspective.”

She was the last Pioneer to come down from her Raven, I recall. Obviously she enjoyed the experience. “Yeah, it was pretty cool,” I say.

“Or maybe I’m just getting accustomed to my situation. If you give it enough time, maybe you can accept anything, no matter how crazy.” She lifts her arms at the shoulder joints, shrugging. “But whatever the reason, I feel better. So now I’m doing what I should’ve done a week ago. I came here to thank you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“What you did was very brave, Adam. You didn’t know what would happen when you jumped into my circuits. Your files could’ve been deleted. You could’ve disappeared.”

“You’re giving me too much credit. I just—”

“No, it was brave. And now I want to be brave too. I’m ready to get the memory back.”

She doesn’t have to specify which memory she’s talking about. It’s the one that nearly killed her, the memory of being trapped in a pitch-black closet when she was two years old. I still have it in my circuits, the image of toddler Jenny staring at herself in the mirror, and then the sudden terror as her older brother shoves her into the closet and locks the door. I’m not surprised that it paralyzed her circuits when she awoke inside her Pioneer. In fact, I’m afraid it might shut her down again.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “You can wait a little longer, you know.”

“I’m ready. It’s a piece of me, an important piece. And I want to be whole again.”

“Well, I guess I could put the memory in a separate folder and transfer it to you wirelessly. Then you could put it back in the right place in your files.”

Jenny pauses. “I might need some help with that. Is there any chance you could jump into my circuits again? You know, just in case I have a problem?”

She says this in a casual, offhand way, but I can tell she’s worried. She really, really wants me to help her. For a moment I wonder if I should get Dad involved. He’s the expert on neuromorphic circuits. But then I dismiss the idea. Dad may have designed our electronics, but he doesn’t live in them. At this point I know more about the circuits than he does.

I go to the corner of my room where Pioneer 1A stands and pick up the data cable that lies by its footpads. Then I return to Jenny and plug one end of the cable into her data port. “I have just one request.” I plug the other end into my own port. “Promise you won’t hit me in the turret and break my camera again.”

Jenny holds up her right hand. “I promise. No hitting.”

“All right. Here goes.”

I initiate the transfer. As my data rushes through the cable I feel the familiar nausea, but it’s not as bad as before. In less than a second I’m inside Jenny’s Pioneer and occupying a vacant section of her circuitry. Her electronics are utterly calm, which is a stark contrast from last time. She gives me a moment to settle down, then sends a message from her side of the circuitry to mine.

Welcome back. Do you like what I’ve done with the place?

I move toward her, venturing into the circuits between us.

Yeah, it’s nice. Very quiet.

You see, you’re helping me already. I was nervous a second ago, but now I’m fine. Do you have the memory?

I retrieve it from my files and move a little closer. There’s less than a millimeter of empty circuitry between us.

Okay, I’m going to hand it off. Just like a football. Here it comes.

Our minds touch, and it’s like seeing Jenny’s whole life in front of me. Unlike last time, though, all her memories are neatly organized now. There are folders for every person, place, and thing. Most of her recent memories are in the high-school folder, which is divided into hundreds of categories: soccer practice, tenth-grade geometry, junior prom, and so on. Older memories are in the elementary-school and preschool folders.

I see images of her friends, her arguments with her brother, her favorite TV shows. She knows how to play the flute and speak French and ride a horse. She was hoping to become a lawyer, like her dad, and she was about to start filling out her college applications when she learned she had brain cancer. I see her memory of the doctor telling her the news. She’s sitting on an examining table and staring at her hands. She’s trembling in disbelief.

At the same time, Jenny’s viewing my memories. I can sense her presence in my files and feel her reactions to what she’s seeing. Although she’s sympathetic and understanding, it still makes me uncomfortable. I want to end this as quickly as possible and get back to my Pioneer.

I give Jenny the traumatic memory from her childhood. A tremor runs through her circuits as she accepts it, but the disturbance doesn’t last long. She puts the file into her folder of early memories, and it becomes part of her again, shaping who she is.

Thank you, Adam. That wasn’t hard at all.

Glad to help. Though I don’t think you really needed me. You handled it perfectly.

No, you helped a lot. Now I want to give you something. To show my appreciation.

Jenny, you don’t—

Here. I want to share this with you.

It’s one of her memories, a fairly recent one. I see a wide green valley on a sunny summer day. There are rolling hills in the distance and a red barn and a gray silo. Jenny’s lying in the grass, and the air smells of clover and horses. Someone else lies nearby, a brown-haired teenage boy. Probably Jenny’s boyfriend, although I didn’t see any images of a boyfriend in her folder of high-school memories. Then the boy turns his head toward Jenny and I recognize him. His legs are paralyzed and so is his left arm. It’s the boy I used to be. It’s Adam Armstrong.

What’s going on? This can’t be a memory.

Well, part of it’s a memory. I went to a horse farm in the Shenandoah Valley last summer. It was a wonderful place.

But I wasn’t there.

I added your image to the scene. I figured out how to do it a couple of days ago. It’s like using Photoshop on a regular computer. You can take an image from one memory and insert it into another.

So this is more like a dream than a memory?

Yes, that’s right. It’s a dream. A beautiful dream.

Jenny turns to me, propping her elbow on the grass. She resembles the girl I saw on my first visit to Pioneer Base, the pale, bald girl sitting beside her parents in the auditorium, except in this image she’s neither pale nor bald. It must be a memory of how she looked before she got cancer. Her eyes are bright blue and her cheeks are full of color and her hair is long and blond and lustrous. Like Brittany. She reminds me of Brittany. I get a little worried as I notice this similarity, because I know Jenny can see all my thoughts, but the comparison doesn’t seem to upset her. She stretches her arm toward me and clasps my right hand. I feel the pressure of her grip, which surprises me. My mind is participating in Jenny’s dream, responding to everything she does.

I like you, Adam.

Uh, thanks. I like you too.

Do you like me as much as you like Shannon?

This also surprises me, although it shouldn’t. Jenny can see my memories of Shannon, all the conversations we’ve had. Nothing is hidden here, and maybe that’s a good thing. This is a place where it’s impossible to lie.

I like both of you. Is that okay?

I don’t know. I guess so. She squeezes my hand. I want to kiss you. Would you like that?

Circuits crackle all around me. If I had a heart, it would be pounding. I never kissed a girl before. I never imagined it could happen. I thought I’d live my whole life without it.

Wow. Definitely. But is it, like, possible? I mean, in this dream?

Let’s find out.

April 5, 2018

Dear Mom,

Please don’t rip up this letter. I just want you to know that I respect your feelings. You believe that I’m a copy of your son, and the truth is, you may be right. Although it doesn’t feel that way to me—I believe with all my being that I’m Adam Armstrong—I can’t prove it. And I realize how painful it must be to get a letter from someone you think is an impostor. But I’m begging you to read this letter to the end and send something in response—a note, a postcard, whatever. Even if I’m just a copy, I have feelings too.

I miss you so much.

Adam

From: The National Security Adviser

The White House, Washington, DC

To: General Calvin Hawke

Commander, Pioneer Base

Cal, we just got the green light. The Russian Army has agreed to go along with our plan, but only on the condition that we launch the assault on Tatishchevo by April 8. That means we need to get the Pioneers on a transport plane to Russia by tomorrow morning. I know this is sooner than expected, but we don’t have a choice. The Russians are demanding that we attack Sigma before it can release the anthrax bacteria that the terrorists smuggled into Tatishchevo. The Russian bioweapons experts are now predicting that the stolen anthrax could kill more people than all the nuclear missiles COMBINED.

We’ve already dispatched a semitrailer truck that should arrive at Pioneer Base by twelve hundred hours today. To maintain the secrecy of the operation, the vehicle will have the same markings as the trucks that deliver the base’s weekly supplies. But it’ll also have an extra-wide trailer, specially outfitted for transporting Pioneers. You’ll be able to load the truck tonight and head for Buckley Air Force Base. A C-17 will be waiting there to fly your unit to Saratov.

I’m sorry we couldn’t give you more time, Cal. As a consolation, the Army National Training Center is sending you the special package you requested. It wasn’t easy, but they managed to fit the darn thing into the oversize trailer of the truck that’ll come to your base today. Your Pioneers will be able to train with it for a few hours before they leave for Russia.

One more thing. I know you don’t need another distraction right now, but I have some bad news. Ryan Boyd, the seventeen-year-old friend of Adam Armstrong, was found dead last night in Yonkers, New York. He was shot once in the head, execution style, and his body dumped in a vacant lot. Pinned to his shirt was a photo of a girl in her late teens, and under her picture was a note, presumably written by the killer. It said, “I HAVE BRITTANY. TELL ADAM TO COME OUT OF HIDING, OR I’LL KILL HER TOO.”

The police have identified her as Brittany Taylor, a runaway from Yorktown Heights. If you happen to know anything about her relationship to Armstrong, please put the information in your next memo and order Colonel Peterson to deliver it to me immediately, but DON’T question Armstrong about it or tell him what happened to his friend Ryan. Sigma clearly arranged this atrocity to antagonize Armstrong and draw him out of Pioneer Base. The AI hasn’t been able to find the base, so it’s trying other ways to disrupt our plans. At this critical point, we can’t allow that to happen. To be on the safe side, don’t say anything to Armstrong’s father either.

Good luck, Cal. God bless you and the Pioneers.

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9725484853

DATE: 04/06/18

S: Good morning. How’s the weather in Maryland?

R: Why do you always ask about the weather, Unc? Don’t you know it’s a terrible way to start a conversation?

(Voice analysis confirms that the speaker is Richard Ramsey. His cell phone is linked to a wireless tower near Baltimore-Washington International Airport.)

S: I assume you just dropped someone off at the airport?

R: Yeah, I handed Brittany over to your boys. The two big guys with Russian accents.

S: And their Learjet departed on schedule?

R: Oh yeah. It must’ve cost you a bundle, renting that private jet. Are you Russian too, Unc? One of those Russian billionaires?

S: What was Brittany’s condition?

R: I gave her a sleeping pill to keep her quiet during the car ride. She was still snoozing when your boys carried her aboard the plane.

S: And what did she say when you questioned her? Anything about Adam Armstrong?

R: Well, she cursed a lot and scratched my face, but she didn’t tell me anything interesting. She said she hasn’t seen Adam since last June.

S: Do you believe her?

R: I didn’t at first. She got nervous when I mentioned the kid’s name. I thought she was lying to protect him. But then I realized she was ashamed. She begged me not to tell Adam what had happened to her, why she ran away from home. I guess he was like a kid brother to her. She didn’t want him to know she was living on the street.

(Conclusion: Both Adam Armstrong and Brittany Taylor are highly emotional, even for humans. But are these emotions an advantage or a disadvantage? This remains an open question.)

S: And what about Ryan Boyd? Did he offer any more information about Adam when you held the gun to his head?

R: Not a word. He was crying too hard. It looks like we’ve hit a dead end, Unc.

S: No, I’ve discovered another way to locate Armstrong. And you can assist me.

R: You don’t give up easily, do you?

S: Please hear me out. I believe Adam is being held at a U.S. Army base. While analyzing the video from security cameras in Washington, DC, I recognized the face of an army officer, a colonel in the U.S. Cyber Command.

R: Whoa, how did you—

S: His name is Peterson. I saw him a few weeks ago at the research lab run by Adam’s father. It appears that Peterson is currently acting as a courier, delivering classified documents to and from the White House. I believe if you questioned the man, he could tell you where Adam is.

R: You’ve gone off the deep end, Unc. You want me to interrogate a freakin’ colonel?

S: He’s accompanied by other officers most of the time, but on certain nights when he’s in Washington he goes alone to an establishment called the Secret Pleasures Lounge. All you have to do is wait for him there. I’ll email you a recent picture of the man.

R: Look, if you’re serious about this, you’re gonna have to—

S: I’ll pay you another $200,000. Go to the lounge tonight and look for Peterson.

R: And if I find him?

S: Take the colonel to a secluded location and ask him about Adam.

CHAPTER 16

We ride the freight elevator to the surface the next morning, heading for another training exercise. As I step outside with the other Pioneers I see an extra-wide semitrailer truck parked in the middle of the basin. I focus my camera on the truck, marveling over its unusual size. Then another vehicle emerges from the rear of the trailer and clanks down a ramp to the ground. I recognize it from one of the databases General Hawke ordered us to download. It’s a Russian T-90 battle tank.

The tank picks up speed as it moves away from the trailer. Despite its tremendous weight, it races across the muddy basin. One of Hawke’s soldiers rides in the turret, which is shaped like a clamshell and painted desert-camouflage brown. The tank has two machine guns—one for firing at infantry and one for shooting down aircraft—and a fifteen-foot-long main gun, which fires high-explosive armor-piercing shells. The clamshell turret rotates atop the tank, and the main gun sweeps around like a clock’s second hand, pointing at the snow-covered ridges that encircle the basin.

The Pioneers stand in a line, all six of us, and stare at the T-90. After a couple of minutes the tank turns around and heads straight for us. I’m getting ready to leap to the side when the T-90 stops, less than ten yards away. The soldier in the turret takes off his goggles and helmet and clambers down to the ground. It’s not one of Hawke’s soldiers, I realize. It’s Hawke himself.

“Surprised?” The general grins, holding his helmet under his arm. “I used to be a tank commander in the First Armored Division. But I have to admit, I never rode in a Russian tank before.”

Two more soldiers climb out of the turret. They go to the back of the T-90, open a compartment there, and start making adjustments. Hawke points at the tank. “You’re probably wondering, how the heck did the U.S. Army get its hands on this thing?” He grins again. “Well, the details are classified, but the Army National Training Center acquired it a few years ago. I had it brought here today because you need to see how it works. All the automated tanks at Tatishchevo are T-90s.”

I scroll through my files, remembering everything Hawke told us about the automated regiment at Tatishchevo. To defend the missile base, the Russian Army built a hundred unmanned T-90s, all designed to be operated by remote control. But after Sigma transferred itself to Tatishchevo’s computer lab, it sent its own instructions to the tanks. The AI used them to massacre the base’s soldiers.

“Sir?” I raise a steel hand. Hawke will probably yell at me for asking another premature question, but I can’t stop myself. “How are we going to fight the T-90s? With anti-tank guns?”

He shakes his head. “Negative. You’re jumping to conclusions. Fighting the tank isn’t the goal of today’s exercise.” He points again at the armored behemoth behind him, and this time I notice the long antenna rising from its turret. “We’ve installed a neuromorphic control unit in this T-90. You’re gonna take turns transferring to the tank so you can practice driving it and firing its gun.”

I don’t get it. How does this fit into the plans for attacking Tatishchevo? “Sir, I don’t—”

“I’d love to talk about it, Armstrong, but we don’t have the time. We can stay outside for only two hours today, and I want everyone to get a chance to operate the tank.” He turns away from me and points at Zia. “You’re up first, Lieutenant Allawi.”

“Yes, sir!” She salutes him, of course, and begins the transfer.

The other Pioneers break into groups as Zia radios her data to the T-90. Marshall chats with DeShawn while Jenny leans toward Shannon and whispers something I don’t catch. It makes me nervous to see the two girls talking. I’m glad Jenny’s feeling better, but I’m worried she’ll tell Shannon what happened yesterday.

I don’t know why I feel so guilty. I didn’t do anything wrong. I did a favor for Jenny, that’s all. Then we shared a memory—or a dream, or whatever it was. And yes, we kissed, but it’s not like we’re going to start dating or anything. I mean, it’s absurd, right? Robots can’t date. All they can do is exchange signals. Now that I think about what happened, it just seems kind of sad. We were pretending we were still human.

So I did nothing wrong and have nothing to feel guilty about, yet I know Shannon will get upset if Jenny tells her. I increase the sensitivity of my acoustic sensor and strain to hear what they’re saying. Anxiety carves a deep gouge in my circuits.

Then Zia completes her transfer and takes off in the T-90, zigzagging across the basin. I don’t really feel like watching her drive the tank, so I turn my turret in the opposite direction. Then, unexpectedly, I see Dad. He’s walking quickly toward me. His shoes are splattered with mud.

I don’t know what he’s doing here, but I’m happy to see him. We didn’t get a chance to talk yesterday, and I want to tell him about my letter to Mom. As he gets closer, though, I notice he’s agitated. He’s breathing hard and his pulse is racing. Being worried is Dad’s natural state, his default emotion, but now he seems truly freaked out. I leave the other Pioneers and stride toward him. “Dad? Are you okay?”

He stops in his tracks, huffing and puffing. “I just heard…that the truck arrived.” He points at the semitrailer, now emptied of its heavy load. “Did Hawke tell you…when you’re leaving?”

“Leaving?”

“Yes, in the truck. You’re going to Buckley Air Force Base tonight.” Dad looks puzzled. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No, he said nothing.” I feel a surge of panic. “We’re leaving tonight?”

“You’re flying to Russia. In a transport plane, a C-17. My God, why is he keeping it secret?”

Turning my turret around, I aim my camera at Hawke. He’s holding his radio and shouting instructions to Zia. As I stare at his ruddy face, my panic turns to anger. There’s a reason why Hawke won’t tell us anything: he doesn’t trust us. He’s treating us like children.

“He’s impossible,” I say, turning my turret back to Dad. “He won’t even explain this exercise we’re doing. He’s making us transfer to the T-90, but he won’t say why.”

Dad shakes his head. “I hate all this secrecy. I really do.” Frowning, he glances at the T-90, which is making left and right turns under Zia’s control. Then he steps closer to me and lowers his voice. “If Hawke won’t explain it, I will. When we looked at the satellite photos of Tatishchevo, we saw that Sigma was bringing its tanks to the automated factory next to the base’s computer lab. And when we studied the photos of the T-90s more closely, we saw that their antennas were being replaced.”

“Replaced with what?”

He points at the antenna rising from my turret, the long pole with a dozen crossbars. “The new antennas on the T-90s are like yours. They can transmit and receive huge amounts of data. We concluded that Sigma was installing neuromorphic control units in the tanks. This would allow the AI to put itself inside a T-90 instead of just operating it by remote control.”

“But why?”

“Our best guess is that it’s part of Sigma’s backup plan. Just like you, the AI can’t occupy two separate computers at the same time. If the computer lab at Tatishchevo comes under attack, Sigma will have to transfer itself to another machine before our missiles blast the place. So it’s modifying the T-90s to be its escape pods. Because there are so many of the tanks and they’re all identical, we’d have a hard time figuring out which one holds the AI.” Dad pauses and then, to my surprise, he smiles. “But there’s a bright side to all this. If Sigma can transfer to the T-90s at Tatishchevo, so can a Pioneer. All you need to do is get close enough to the tank.”

I realize why Dad’s smiling. This is the assault plan he conceived for the Army. “And we’re going to use the Raven drones to get close?” I ask. “We’ll glide into Tatishchevo, circle above the T-90s, and transfer to their control units?”

Dad nods. “The beauty of it is that the drones can fly into the base unnoticed. You won’t make a sound or appear on any radar screens.”

“And what happens then? What do we do once we’re inside the tanks?”

“That’ll depend on the positions of the T-90s on the night of the assault. In the best-case scenario, several of the tanks will be near the computer lab. The Pioneers will take control of them and blast Sigma’s computer to smithereens. If that’s not possible, we’ll use the tanks to destroy Tatishchevo’s communications network. That should prevent Sigma from launching its nukes, or at least delay the launch for a few minutes. And that’ll give the Russian Army enough time to fire its cruise missiles at the computer lab and finish the job.”

He’s still smiling. Dad seems quite pleased with himself. And he should be pleased—it’s a good plan, a clever surprise attack. But it’s not perfect. I see problems. “What if Sigma’s already inside one of the T-90s? And what if one of us transfers to the tank that Sigma’s occupying?”

Dad’s smile wavers. “That’s definitely a risk. Sigma would delete any Pioneer that tries to enter its control unit. And we’d also lose the element of surprise. But the sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. The loss of radio contact with one of the Pioneers would alert all the others, and it would tell them exactly where Sigma is. Then it would be five tanks against one, and those are pretty good odds.”

This makes sense, but I’m still not satisfied. There are other problems with the plan. So many things could go wrong. I don’t mean to sound critical, but I can’t help but think that the Pioneers could’ve come up with something better if they’d been allowed to participate in the planning process. And maybe it’s not too late, maybe we can still make changes. I want to ask Dad if that’s possible, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I take an extra hundredth of a second to figure out what to say. But before I can synthesize the first word, an enormous explosion rocks the basin.

My acoustic sensor measures the noise at one hundred fifty decibels, the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. Half a second later I hear another explosion that isn’t quite as loud but still makes the ground tremble. I shift my legs, planting my footpads as firmly as I can in the mud, and turn toward the noise. I’m sure that Sigma has attacked us. The AI must’ve targeted the group of Pioneers behind me, most likely with a guided missile or bomb. As I turn my turret, I brace myself for the sight of the wreckage, the twisted shards of the robots scattered across the ground.

But instead I see the Pioneers standing next to General Hawke, all facing the T-90. A plume of smoke drifts upward from the muzzle of the tank’s main gun. Another plume rises from one of the snow-covered ridges, about a half a mile away. Now I realize what happened: the first noise was the firing of a shell from the tank’s gun, and the second was the shell’s detonation on the mountainside. Zia has successfully completed the training exercise, and the other Pioneers are applauding her well-aimed shot. I can hear their synthesized cheers amid the echoes from the two explosions.

Hawke shouts, “Good job, Allawi!” into his radio. Then he points at me. “Your turn, Armstrong. Get over here.”

I’m so distressed I don’t even say good-bye to Dad. As I stride toward the general, Zia transfers back to her robot, and the others gather around her, still cheering. But I can’t shake the image that just swept through my circuits, the vision of twisted, smoking wreckage, the awful premonition of the end of the Pioneers.

Driving the T-90 and firing its gun should’ve been one of the highlights of my robotic life, but my bad mood spoils everything. I go through the motions, steering the tank across the basin, but it doesn’t seem a whole lot different from driving the Humvee. And there’s nothing particularly fantastic about shooting the main gun—you just measure the wind speed, calculate the trajectory, and pull the trigger. I complete the exercise in seven minutes, then transfer back to my robot. Then I watch four more Pioneers do the same thing.

After the training session, while the others are striding back to the freight elevator, I approach Hawke and ask him again if he’s heard any news about Ryan. The general shakes his head and gives me the same line about the police and FBI being “on the case.” I want to ask him what this means exactly, but he marches off before I get a chance.

Hawke has scheduled a briefing for later this afternoon, at sixteen hundred hours. I assume that’s when he’ll announce that we’re leaving for Russia. In the meantime, Zia leads us to the gym on Pioneer Base’s lowest level. We take the freight elevator downstairs, and when the doors open, I do a double take—six Pioneers are already lined up on the concrete floor. They stand there like statues, silent and motionless, their torsos stamped with the labels 1A, 2A, 3A, and so on. They’re the evil twins, the empty, lifeless robots usually kept in our rooms. I have no idea why they’re here.

Zia steps out of the elevator first, then turns her turret around to face the rest of us. “Listen up, Pioneers. We have a problem. General Hawke ordered you to practice the wireless data transfer at least thirty times a day. That’s why he put the A-series robots in your rooms. But when we checked the data logs on the machines, we found that some of you are neglecting your duties.” She trains her camera on me. “Armstrong, you’re the worst offender. You transferred to your 1A unit only seven times on Wednesday and only five times yesterday.”

I synthesize a groan. This is ridiculous. “Come on, Zia. I practiced enough. I got my transfer time down to fourteen seconds.”

“An order is an order. This is serious business. We have to cut our times to the absolute minimum.”

“How fast can you transfer? Can you beat fourteen seconds?”

“All right, enough chatter. We’re gonna spend the next two hours practicing.” She points at the line of evil twins. “Everyone, pair up with your A-series robot. First do a set of twenty transfers at a distance of five meters. Then do another set at ten meters, and a third set at twenty. When you’re done, repeat the sequence.” Zia strides toward Pioneer 3A, her own evil twin. Just like Pioneer 3, it has a circular saw attached to its left arm and an acetylene torch on its right. “Okay, move out!”

With great reluctance, I stride toward Pioneer 1A. I know Zia’s right—a lower transfer time could be crucial in a combat situation. If your machine comes under fire, you might need to switch to another control unit immediately. But practicing the transfer is so freaking boring.

Because the A-series robots are lined up in numerical order, I find myself next to Pioneer 2, Jenny Harris. I expect her to turn her turret away from me out of nerves or embarrassment, so I’m surprised when a cheerful “Hi, Adam” comes out of her speakers. If she had a face she’d be grinning. I retrieve a memory of the dream we shared yesterday, an image of the blue-eyed, blond-haired Jenny lying on a grassy hillside in Virginia. It’s a nice memory, but it makes me uncomfortable. I’m worried about where this is going.

“Uh, hi,” I respond.

She turns her turret toward Pioneer 2A and powers up her wireless system, as if she’s getting ready to transfer her files to her evil twin. But instead she sends me a radio message, encrypted in such a way that only I can decode it.

I noticed that Zia didn’t answer your question. About whether she could transfer as fast as you can. I bet she can’t.

It’s a little strange to communicate by radio with someone who’s standing right next to you. Although it’s not as intimate as sharing circuits with Jenny—I can’t see her thoughts now and she can’t see mine—I still feel anxious as I compose my own coded message and radio it to her.

Zia likes to give me a hard time. I have no idea why.

It’s simple. She’s jealous.

Jealous of me? You’re kidding, right?

It’s so clear, Adam. She hates the fact that you’re smarter than her.

I turn my turret clockwise, then counter. No, I think there’s more to it. Something weird is going on inside her head. Inside her circuits, I mean.

Well, whatever the reason, you shouldn’t let it bother you. I’m on your side, and so is DeShawn. And Shannon too, of course.

The mention of Shannon sends a bolt of alarm through my circuits. She can’t overhear us, but I turn my turret toward her anyway. She’s busy practicing her transfers, sending her data to Pioneer 4A and then back to Pioneer 4. She’s concentrating so dutifully on the exercise that she doesn’t see me aim my camera at her. But Jenny does. She sends me another message.

Don’t worry. I won’t tell Shannon what happened between us.

I swiftly turn my turret back to Jenny. Uh, good. I mean—

I know you like her more than me. Because you knew her before.

No, that’s not true. I like both of you.

I’m okay with it, Adam. Really. Don’t feel bad.

Jenny, I—

Listen, we better get to work. Zia will have a fit if she sees we’re not practicing.

Before I can say anything else, Jenny begins transferring her files to Pioneer 2A. I stand there for a couple of seconds, feeling foolish and guilty. Then I face Pioneer 1A, my own evil twin, and force myself to make the leap to its circuits.

I feel even more uncomfortable now, and I suspect that Jenny isn’t happy either. As we transmit our data back and forth, our Pioneers gradually move apart, taking a few strides after every transfer. Within a few minutes I’ve moved both my robots to the other side of the gym. Now I’m near Pioneers 6 and 6A, DeShawn and his evil twin. This maneuver also maximizes my distance from Zia, who’s panning her camera across the gym, constantly checking on the rest of us.

DeShawn raises his arm when he sees me, and I hear a surprising noise come out of his speakers. It’s laughter. He’s only the second Pioneer to figure out how to do this. His laugh is deep and sonorous—very different from Marshall’s laugh, which is sharp and grating—and just the sound of it is enough to cheer me up. But I’m also jealous. I want to laugh too. I’m starting to wonder if it’ll ever come back to me.

“Yo, Adam, check it out.” DeShawn straightens his arms and bends his legs at the knee joints, putting Pioneer 6 in the exact same posture as 6A. The robots stand side by side like mirror images. “Like two peas in a pod, right? Which one’s the real me?”

“Oh boy, tough question. Maybe the one that’s talking? That’s just a wild guess, though.”

“How about now? Want to change your guess?”

My acoustic sensors detect something unusual. DeShawn’s synthesized words are coming from the speakers of Pioneer 6 and Pioneer 6A. “Whoa, what the—”

“That’s not all. Watch this.” As DeShawn’s voice booms in stereo, both of his robots extend their right arms. Moving in perfect synchrony, Pioneers 6 and 6A raise their steel hands to their turrets and snap off a salute. “Private DeShawn Johnson, reporting for duty, sir.” Then both robots step forward and simultaneously swing their arms. Pioneer 6 slaps his right hand against the left side of my torso, and Pioneer 6A slaps his left hand against my right side.

Unfortunately, the clanging gets Zia’s attention. “Hey!” she shouts from the other side of the gym. “What’s going on over there?”

DeShawn waves at her. He’s moving just Pioneer 6 now. “Sorry, Zia. We’re taking a break.”

“You’ve only been practicing for five minutes! Get back to work!”

“Okay, no problem!” DeShawn keeps waving till she turns her turret away from us. Then both his robots step closer to me and speak in unison again. “I hate that girl. She’s no fun at all.”

“How are you doing that?” I ask. “How can you control both of them at once?”

“I just figured it out this morning. It’s like a balancing act. Instead of transferring my data files, I copy them. Then I send the copies to the other robot.”

I glance at Pioneer 6, then at 6A. “Wait a second. All your files are in both robots?”

“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Each robot wraps one of his arms around the other’s waist. “We’re brothers. Tight as can be.”

“But if you copied everything, wouldn’t you turn the other robot into a clone? Like an identical twin, but with all your memories? And wouldn’t it start thinking for itself?”

“Yeah, that would happen if you transferred the copies and did nothing else. But there’s a second step, the balancing. While I’m sending the data to the other robot I’m also coordinating their thoughts. The signals jump back and forth by radio, constantly moving between the two Pioneers. As long as they stay in radio contact, they can share the same mind.”

If I had a mouth, it would be gaping. This is incredible. “My God, DeShawn. You’re a genius! How did you figure it out?”

Pioneers 6 and 6A turn their turrets, first clockwise, then counter. “Nah, it was just trial and error. I tried different things until something interesting happened. If you want, I’ll transmit the instructions to you. Then you’ll see how simple it is.”

I’m dying to try it. “Can you send the instructions right now?”

“Coming right up.”

An instant later I’m reviewing them. DeShawn has written a program that alters the flow of thoughts in our circuits, funneling them into a rapid stream of data that can be transmitted back and forth between two Pioneers. Because their circuits are linked so closely and share so much information, the two robots think and act as one. A single mind occupies both machines.

Without saying another word, I load the program into my own circuits and start copying my files. Then I turn my turret toward Pioneer 1A and transfer the copies. I feel the stretching sensation again as the copied files move in waves toward the other robot, but this time the sensation doesn’t end when the transfer is complete. Instead, it gets more intense. I feel bigger, taller, towering over everyone. I feel like I’ve taken a huge stride across the gym and now I’m standing, a bit unsteadily, on two robotic stilts.

I see why DeShawn called it a balancing act. Now I have two of everything. My two cameras provide me with two views of the gym. I have to combine the perspectives to make sense of the data. Same thing with my acoustic sensors and radar systems.

Maneuvering both Pioneers is also a challenge. At first they do everything simultaneously, their movements perfectly mirroring each other, but after a while I figure out how to send a different order to each robot. It’s kind of like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time—it requires some concentration. While I raise Pioneer 1’s right arm, I order 1A to bend his left leg. Then I order Pioneer 1 to punch the air while 1A throws a kick. Then I get the robots to stride toward each other and bump fists. This is cool!

“Not bad,” DeShawn says. “Now do something crazy. Go wild, dude.”

I have an idea. I go to my memory files and retrieve “Power,” my favorite Kanye West song. While blasting the song from the robots’ speakers, I order Pioneer 1 to fold his arms across his torso and rock up and down. At the same, Pioneer 1A swings his arms back and forth while hopping from one footpad to the other. I’m trying to imitate the dance moves I’ve seen on Kanye’s music videos. I think I’m doing a pretty good job, but DeShawn turns his turret clockwise and counter.

“No, no, stop,” he says. “Sorry, Adam, but you’re the worst dancer I’ve ever seen.”

“Come on, give me a break. I’m just getting warmed—”

“Armstrong!”

It’s Zia, of course. She’s only ten feet away. She must’ve crossed the gym while I was dancing. “What are you doing?” she shouts. “Playing games again?”

I switch the music off and turn both my turrets toward her. Now that I think about it, I’m glad Zia interrupted me. She needs to know what DeShawn has done. This new ability he’s discovered could change everything. “Okay, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m inside both of these—”

“Didn’t I tell you to get back to work? That was a direct order, Armstrong.”

“Yeah, I know, but I got something to show you. We should get Hawke down here too.”

“Are you deaf? You’re disobeying a direct order!”

This is frustrating. Can’t she see what’s going on? To make things as clear as possible, I order both my robots to stride toward her, Pioneer 1 from the right and 1A from the left. “Look, Zia. Just shut up for a second and look what I can do.”

I expect her to be impressed, but instead she gets alarmed. She takes a step backward and raises both her arms, pointing her acetylene torch at Pioneer 1 and her circular saw at 1A. “Get back!” she yells. “I’m warning you, Armstrong! Don’t mess with me!”

“Hey, calm down. I’m trying to tell you something important. We need to show Hawke what DeShawn figured out. It could give us some new options for the Tatishchevo mission and—”

“I said get back!” Zia screams. Then she turns on her circular saw and fires up her torch and charges toward Pioneer 1.

What’s wrong with her? In an instant she’s turned into a homicidal maniac. Both my cameras focus on the jet of blue flame shooting out of her torch. According to my infrared sensors, the flame’s temperature is 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit, twice as high as the melting point of steel. As Zia rushes forward she thrusts the torch at the exact center of Pioneer 1’s torso, aiming for my neuromorphic circuits.

My survival instincts kick in. I order Pioneer 1 to leap to the right and Pioneer 1A to grab Zia from behind. But I’m still learning how to move the two robots at once, and my reactions aren’t as fast as Zia’s. Adjusting her course, she angles to the right and slams into Pioneer 1. I tumble backward and crash to the floor with Zia on top of me, her weight pinning me to the concrete.

I can’t move my left arm. It’s trapped under my torso. I start to swing my right arm, but before it can hit Zia’s turret, she brings down her left, jamming her circular saw into my shoulder joint. The saw’s titanium carbide teeth bite into the softer metal of the joint, and my right arm goes dead.

But I still have Pioneer 1A, which strides toward the two robots grappling on the floor. With 1A’s camera, I see a shower of sparks erupt from the side of Pioneer 1’s torso. Zia’s using her acetylene torch like a knife, cutting into the armor surrounding my electronics. Molten steel pours from the cut and puddles on the concrete. Frantic, I hurl 1A at Zia, hoping to knock her off Pioneer 1. But as I reach for her, she twists her torso and swings her left arm around, telescoping it to its full length. The circular saw sweeps through the air like a cutlass and slashes 1A’s left leg at the knee joint. The robot loses its balance and crashes to the floor.

The other Pioneers rush toward us from all over the gym. DeShawn hollers, “Stop!” and lunges at Zia, but she forces him back with another swipe of her saw. Shannon and Jenny are coming too but they’re twenty yards away. They won’t get here in time. Zia’s torch has already cut through my armor. The jet of flame is melting my circuits, erasing my memories, terminating my thoughts. My mind is roaring with the random noise of fear, which drowns out all my other signals.

I have one option left. Within the circuits of Pioneer 1A, I use DeShawn’s program to funnel my remaining thoughts into a tight, furious stream. Then I fire this stream at Zia’s antenna and plunge into her mind.

As soon as I enter her circuits, everything grows still. Zia’s mind is a marvel of quiet efficiency. All her thoughts are fixed on one thing, destroying my Pioneer. She’s so focused on this task that she doesn’t even notice my presence in her electronics. Racing forward, I dive into her neatly arranged files and try to disrupt her concentration. In a thousandth of a second I plow through her earliest memories—fuzzy images of her mother and father, a veterans’ hospital, a military funeral. I see the faces of foster parents and child-welfare workers, all the strangers who took over her life after her parents died. Then I see a long, cold walk down an empty street at night.

These memories are full of confusion and sadness, and Zia has walled them off from the rest of her files. But there’s one memory that’s so powerful it shapes everything in her electronics, warping the circuits around it like a magnet. It’s an image of Zia at twelve years old, facing two older boys in a deserted alley. One boy is tall and pale, and the other is hideously fat, and they’re both leering at her.

I see the fat boy step toward her from the left and the tall boy swoop in from the right, and now I know why Zia attacked me. There’s a link between this image and the memory of what happened a few seconds ago, right before she went crazy. When I ordered Pioneers 1 and 1A to approach Zia from both sides, I unintentionally reminded her of the worst moment of her life.

As I view the image she finally notices me, and all the activity in her circuits screeches to a halt. Her circular saw stops spinning and the flame in her torch goes out. She pulls away from the damaged torso of Pioneer 1 and for a moment she simply observes me with bewilderment. Then all her thoughts come screaming toward me in a roiling wave.

GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!

Her signals batter me from every direction, but I manage to hold on. I anchor myself to her circuits, digging in.

No! I’m not going anywhere!

GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!

I hold on for six more seconds, which is long enough for the other Pioneers to immobilize Zia. Shannon grabs her right arm and rips off the acetylene torch, while DeShawn tears the circular saw off her left. With immense relief, I withdraw from Zia’s circuits and transmit myself back to Pioneer 1A.

Once the transfer is complete I use 1A’s arms to prop my torso to a sitting position. As I gaze across the gym I realize I’m no longer viewing anything through Pioneer 1’s camera. That robot is dead, its circuits melted. It’s a good thing I copied all my memories and put them into 1A.

A moment later General Hawke rushes into the gym, followed by my father. While Hawke heads for the Pioneers who are restraining Zia, Dad kneels beside me. He yells something, but I can’t focus on what he’s saying. I’m distracted by another memory, one of the millions of memories I saw in Zia’s circuits. It’s an image of a typewritten memo from the National Security Adviser, very similar to the one I saw in Hawke’s hands when I was in his office two days ago. But this is a newer memo, with today’s date, April 6. Zia must’ve seen it this morning, before the training exercise with the T-90. Maybe Hawke showed it to her.

I read the memo. One sentence stands out from the rest:

“Ryan Boyd, the seventeen-year-old friend of Adam Armstrong, was found dead last night in Yonkers, New York.”

“Adam! Adam!”

Dad’s shouting at me, but I can’t answer. There’s nothing wrong with Pioneer 1A’s speech synthesizer. I just can’t speak.

Instead, I aim my camera at the Pioneer’s left leg and examine the damage done by Zia’s circular saw. It gouged the knee joint, but I should be able to walk on it. Using my arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and start limping across the gym.

Hawke shouts at me too, but I’m careful not to turn my camera in his direction. I’m so full of rage at the man that if I look at him, I might kill him. I remember what he said just half an hour ago when I asked him about Ryan. On the case, he said. The police are on the case. But he knew different. He knew Ryan was dead.

I leave the gym and limp down the corridor. I discover I can move faster if I take uneven strides, and soon I’m bounding along, leaving everyone behind. When I reach the stairway I leap up the steps until I get to Level Seven. Then I race to Hawke’s office, clench my hands into fists, and smash the door open. An alarm blares but I ignore it. Striding into the room, I tear apart Hawke’s file cabinet and pull out the folder where he kept the typewritten memos from the White House. A quarter-second later I find the memo that Zia glimpsed. I need to see it myself. I need to read the words.

Ryan Boyd, the seventeen-year-old friend of Adam Armstrong, was found dead last night in Yonkers, New York. He was shot once in the head, execution style, and his body dumped in a vacant lot. Pinned to his shirt was a photo of a girl in her late teens, and under her picture was a note, presumably written by the killer. It said, “I HAVE BRITTANY. TELL ADAM TO COME OUT OF HIDING, OR I’LL KILL HER TOO.”

My steel hands tremble. I let go of the memo and it drifts to the floor. It’s my fault. Sigma couldn’t get me, so it went after my friends.

After another thirty seconds Hawke catches up to me. The general stands in the doorway and frowns at his ruined file cabinet. His displeasure deepens when he sees the memo on the floor. “You shouldn’t have read that,” he says. “That’s classified information.”

I turn my turret away from him. The urge to kill him is very strong. “Zia read it. You showed the memo to her, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t. If she says I did, she’s lying.”

“Why were you keeping it secret in the first place?”

“It was an order, Armstrong. From the National Security Adviser. And in the Army we follow orders, even when they’re difficult.” He folds his arms across his chest. “I’d like to offer my condolences. I’m sorry about Ryan.”

I can’t stand this. I take a step toward the doorway. “Move it. Get out of my way.”

“Not so fast. We have to talk about what happened between you and Zia.”

“If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll bash your head in.”

Hawke stiffens. His eyes narrow. “Don’t threaten me. I’m your commanding officer.”

“Sorry, I forgot. I’ll bash your head in, sir.”

“Stop being stupid. You want to help your friend Brittany? Want to get payback for Ryan? You can’t do it on your own. You have to work with me.” He taps his index finger on his chest. “So whether you like it or not, you’re gonna answer my questions. Thanks to you and Zia, I just lost a fifty-million-dollar robot, and I want to know why.”

I’m so angry. My whole torso is shaking. I used to think Hawke treated us like children, but I was wrong. He treats us like possessions. He thinks he owns us.

I extend my right arm, grip Hawke’s shoulder, and shove him backward. “Out of my way.”

It’s a good, hard shove, maybe a little harder than I intended. Hawke stumbles backward and his head hits the wall on the other side of the corridor. He staggers and slumps to the floor, and for a moment I think he’s going to pass out. But then he grimaces and slowly gets back on his feet. Panting, he gives me a murderous look. “Bad move,” he grunts. “Very bad move.”

He reaches for his holster, but I don’t care if he shoots me. I turn away from him and stride down the corridor. I’m leaving Pioneer Base. I’m going to find Brittany.

Before I can reach the stairway, though, my system freezes. In midstride I lose control of the motors in my legs. My momentum tips me forward and I crash to the floor.

I can’t move my arms or turret either. But my camera and acoustic sensor are still working, and after a second I hear footsteps coming down the corridor. I see Hawke in my camera’s frozen field of view. He’s holding a remote-control device. It must’ve sent a shutoff order to my electronics. It’s a Pioneer kill switch.

Hawke shakes his head. “You failed, Armstrong. Now you’re going to the scrap heap.”

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9780198374

DATE: 04/07/18

S: Good morning. How are you feeling today?

R: Hey, you’re making progress, Unc. You stopped asking about the weather.

(Voice analysis confirms that the speaker is Richard Ramsey. His cell phone is linked to a wireless tower in Burkittsville, Maryland.)

S: So you left Washington, DC, I assume?

R: Yeah, I took a drive last night. From the Secret Pleasures Lounge to the Maryland woods. And I took Colonel Peterson with me.

S: How did you convince him to go with you?

R: I slipped something into his drink. He got tipsy and needed my help to leave the bar. But he was sober again by the time we reached the woods.

S: Was he cooperative?

R: He needed some persuading. After a while he admitted he knew Adam Armstrong. And then he lost it. He started sobbing and babbling and telling this crazy story about children turning into robots. It was pretty strange, Unc.

S: Did he tell you where the boy was?

R: He gave me the coordinates for a place he called Pioneer Base. But I gotta warn you, it’s probably bogus. The woods were dark and the guy was scared out of his mind. I tried to reason with him, but he kept talking nonsense. It wasn’t going anywhere, so after a couple of hours I ended it.

S: Tell me the coordinates anyway.

R: Yeah, I memorized them. Latitude 37-36-18, longitude 107-35-15. It’s in southwestern Colorado.

(Analysis of satellite images shows several newly built structures at the location. The electronic records of the U.S. Department of Defense identify the site as a prison camp and interrogation center for captured terrorists. But the records could be false documents, deliberately fabricated to hide the presence of the Pioneer Project.)

S: You’ve done well. Where’s Peterson now?

R: I hid his body in the woods.

S: Do you think the Army has noticed he’s missing yet?

R: No, his fellow officers think he’s still sleeping in his hotel room. But they’ll probably start looking for him in an hour or so.

(Conclusion: The attack on Pioneer Base must begin in the next hour.)

S: I must attend to other matters now. I believe our business is finished. You’ll receive your final payment soon.