Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against

BASTION ^{DANIEL H. WILSON}

My name is Dr. Ann Parker, chief psychiatrist for the Tau-base lunar settlement, specializing in disaster debriefing and post-traumatic stress rehabilitation. Although this case is unprecedented, my skill set has been determined to be most appropriate to the situation. Interviews will be conducted in the Tau-base hospital module located on the Mare Imbrium plains. Conversations are auto-transcribed from video footage, annotated with my notes and observations, and take place in a standard counseling chamber.

SUBJECT HISTORY: The young man, age twenty-four (confirmed), was apprehended by a Frontier Ranger force patrolling the Trojan asteroid swarm trailing the orbit of Jupiter. Subject was in the company of a band of feral Apex-class synthetic human beings. After his rescue was effected, subject was returned to Tau-base and incarcerated for his own protection. For the first three weeks of contact, subject refused to speak in English, instead communicating via a primitive form of sign language (a machine variety, chiefly employed by Apex hardware working in hard vacuum).

Subject’s birthfather was able to verify his identity via DNA matching. Birthfather also confirmed that during the Apex Decommission Catastrophe (ADC) two decades ago, the subject (four years old, at the time) was on board the USS Bastion when it was famously hijacked by rogue synthetics. Missing for twenty years, subject became popularly known as the “decom baby,” though his birth name was Toby Glint.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION: Subject is male, with brown eyes, black hair, and skin darkened by the radiation effects of time spent in near-Jupiter orbit. He was forcibly disinfected and pressure cleaned, face shaved and his hair cut as part of standard Tau-base entry procedure. Despite a largely zero gravity upbringing, subject exhibited solid muscle mass and no wasting effects.

Routine medical showed past evidence of multiple serious injuries, including scars and bone breaks. Note that Frontier Ranger ROBINT analysts suspected some scars may be aesthetically intentional, an imitation of the crude case-burning decorations common among feral synthetics. Other healed injuries included lacerations, impact fractures, frostbite (vacuum-induced), projected energy burns, and radiation exposure. Subject was wounded by kinetic weaponry during his rescue, but had already undergone surgery before arrival to Tau-base. Nevertheless, subject seems in good overall physical health and does not demonstrate any apparent pain behaviors.

SUBJECTIVE: The subject spent his childhood living among a tribe of Apex-class synthetics, hiding among cored asteroids in the Trojan system. Deprived of human contact, he presents with selective mutism, avoidant mannerisms, and a flat emotional affect. Among this clan of rogue Apex, communication is conducted via coded flashes of light, simple hand gestures, and vibratory clicks that can be felt via pressure sensors. The subject is adept at these primitive modes of communication—reflexively flashing his fingers through pidgin sign language and snapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth in the guttural protocols of the ferals. Our transcripts begin on the day the subject began speaking and last until his final availability.

Good morning, Toby.

[Subject doesn’t respond.]

Toby Glint?

Bastion. [Subject gestures and clicks in some dialect of Apex-speak.]

Excuse me?

My name is Bastion.

It’s nice to hear your voice, Toby. Do you understand the USS Bastion was the name of a lab ship? It originated here on Tau-base, registered to John Glint under the auspices of the province of Ontario, NorthAm. It’s the name of the ship you were kidnapped from twenty years ago. Do you remember?

Yes.

Dr. John Glint is your father.

Yes. I remember. I met him during…

…during the rescue. We’re here to help you, Toby. But we need to understand how you survived out there for two decades. So, let’s start at the beginning. Do you recall the kidnapping? The day you were taken?

I remember a ship. Adults talking in low voices. They were mad at something on the screens. Then scared. Everything was shaking, and legs, like scissors, were swooping back and forth. A man picked me up and carried me. I remember bright lights, like little eyes, curving away.

Corridor lighting. [Checking files.] I believe… the USS Bastion had a centrifugal hull. It would have been curved. What else do you remember?

The man pushed me into a dark place. He told me to be very quiet and he left. Things were rattling around. I couldn’t see anything but I heard people shouting. After awhile it got quiet. I tried to stay in the dark place, but it got very cold. I started to shiver. I couldn’t help it and I started crying. I tried to stop but I couldn’t.

Then a light shined on me.

What did you see?

My mama and papa.

I’m sorry?

The… hardware.

Alpha was an Apex-class male synthetic. Echo was female. I remember them standing over me. Alpha was hurt on his side, and Echo had her arm around his waist. When they saw me… they were surprised.

There was another one, too. A bigger one called Gamma. He acted angry, and he was saying mean words. About what to do with me.

I started to cry again.

The soft one, Echo; she picked me up and held me. I remember her arms were warm. Up close, I could see something was wrong with her. Part of her face was broken. It was… hanging. So I touched it.

I tried to push it back in place and make it better.

After I did that, the big one got quiet. He walked away. And then Alpha and Echo held me together. They smiled, and I stayed with them after that.

Echo was the only warm thing, in all the blackness.

Echo was a former domestic caregiver unit in the daycare module of Tau-base. Her arms were designed to be warm for that purpose.

Oh. I didn’t know that.

On the day of the Apex Decommission Catastrophe, a series of faulty instructions were sent to reduce the intelligence of Apex-class synthetics to more manageable levels. Instead, the update removed all intellectual constraints. She was made feral.

And that was bad.

Alpha and Echo were not your parents, Toby. They were illegal self-governing hardware. They hijacked the USS Bastion and stole you from your real family. Do you understand that?

Yes, Dr. Parker. I understand perfectly.

POST-INTERVIEW NOTES: Toby seems confused about the nature of his kidnapping. He may be harboring a misguided affection for the savage Apex that took him in. Although his neglected language skills are coming along quickly, he still has difficulty emoting properly along with his words. His minimal affect makes it difficult for me to determine his underlying thought processes.

Let’s talk about the last twenty years. Where have you been, Toby?

Home.

You were found in a rogue Apex encampment, hollowed out of a stray asteroid in near-Jupiter orbit. How did you survive there?

Our rock was called Patroclus. It was a Trojan asteroid, in the Achilles group at Jupiter’s fourth LaGrange point; two kilometers of dark stone swept up in orbit behind the father planet and his moons. Beyond the asteroid field was monitored space, with constant military sweeps, but we were safe among millions of tumbling rocks—too many for the humans to search.

Patroclus housed about a dozen… units. There were other rocks, too, and we’d visit them sometimes. But ours was special. I lived inside the ship at first, but after a few months Alpha and Echo took it apart to build a biome for me inside the rock. It was a bright place, with fresh air and leafy green plants. Lots of space to jump and run and hide. There were other cored rocks out there. I don’t know how many, but new synthetics arrived every year from Earth, Tau-base or deep intersolar missions.

They most likely kept you alive in order to ransom your life in an emergency. It didn’t work. You were out there for a long time, Toby. Tell me about your childhood.

When I was little, I didn’t know I was different.

Echo must have known I needed… loving. She would pick me up and rock me in her arms. She would kiss my face and hold me when I cried. Alpha would surprise me, make me laugh. He used to chase me around the biome, hiding his face behind the plants. He’d catch me and tickle me and toss me in the air.

But we weren’t the same.

The Apex didn’t need air or light or space. I tried to be like them, but I couldn’t. I was weak, always hurt. It would have been so much easier for them, without me to take care of. But instead they risked everything to build a place where I could breathe and live and… play.

When I got older, I made them stop treating me different.

The other Apex didn’t need extra attention. It was a waste of energy and time to expend all those resources, just for me. At some point, I decided to be finished with laughing and crying and those childish things.

Toby, the ferals employed rote child-rearing behaviors on you in the same way they built a life support environment, with the express purpose of keeping you alive. It is well known the Apex don’t have true emotions, not like human beings.

Do you think that makes them any less capable of understanding me? Does your lack of true emotion make your job harder?

How so?

Dr. Parker, you are aware that you’re a synthetic human being?

Of course I’m aware of that, Toby. I was designated the most capable entity available for this project—

Because the rest of Tau-base is still celebrating the Rangers’ victory over the ferals… [Subject stops speaking, taking several deep breaths, palms pressed flat to the table.]

I can see you are feeling upset. It must have been hard for you, to have feelings all that time and no one to share them with.

Yes, Dr. Parker. It was. Echo said… she told me I shouldn’t try to be hard, like them, that I should… feel. She scavenged a vid projector for me. Through the passive antennae array, I could intercept old broadcasts from Earth. I watched the shows, saw how the people spoke, how they told jokes and fought and loved each other. It was strange. On Patroclus I never, you know… I never had a human to talk to.

I guess not much has changed.

I’m here to help you, Toby. You can be honest with me. We’ve seen the scars on your body. How did they hurt you?

Damage was unavoidable. The Trojans are a human-lethal environment. Low gravity. No warmth. No oxygen. Jupiter is a variable radiation source, depending on storm activity on the surface, and it’s relentless. We were only safe inside our rock—safe from the father planet and from the Frontier Rangers. For a long time, anyway.

But the injuries?

The big synthetic, Gamma; he was my teacher while Alpha and Echo ran the colony. He taught me to move in zero-G when I was a tiny kid, a long time before I learned to run a centrifugal hull. He held me tight and showed me how to slow my oxygen intake when the biome equilibrium was slipping. He taught me to stay alive.

Injury and repair were part of daily life, for all of us.

When I was about six, Alpha had a breakthrough in his research. He found a way to project energy fields into fabric. He made my first mantle—a kind of flexible space suit with energy fielding woven into it. It projected an energy shield that covered my face and protected me from vacuum and cold and radiation—all at once.

When I put on my mantle, I could finally be like everyone else. I could go outside and look at the stars.

I was so excited I went running straight across the rock surface at full speed, with Gamma angrily chasing after me. I never wanted to come back inside. On my first jump, I nearly lost gravitational connection to the rock. All I saw was the father planet, infinite clouds churning above me. Gamma saved my life, barely, because he had higher mass. Later, I learned to calculate trajectories on the fly, like the Apex. Learning to survive was trial and error, without much margin for error.

It cost me some broken ribs, but the first thing I did that day was to just run and run. Everyone should be free to do that, Dr. Parker. Everyone.

POST-INTERVIEW NOTES: The subject’s dispassionate contextualization of severe bodily injury as a type of “damage” that can be “repaired” is consistent with reports made by the frontier servicemen who rescued him. The subject was reportedly shot with a kinetic rifle during the operation, and several rangers reported witnessing the subject conducting surgery on himself at the time of apprehension. No anesthetic or pain management tools were discovered.

Toby, the Frontier Rangers need your help to finish eliminating the rogue synthetic colonies. You and I have made a lot of progress over the weeks. Now it’s time for you to contribute to the quarantine effort. Can you tell us what the ferals were doing on Patroclus? What was their purpose?

Scavenging wrecks. Mining the occasional exotic rock. Sometimes just pulling resources to keep my habitat going. But mostly we were tending the comm arrays and the beacons. And keeping away from the Frontier Rangers, of course.

New Apex were always arriving to the colony, but they had to travel through monitored space. We planted beacons to show them the way, but we couldn’t leave the transmitters up for long without giving away our own positions. So when a survivor got close enough to us, we had to go out and bring that unit home. Our purpose was to provide safe haven to refugees.

That’s why the Frontier Rangers hunted the Apex for twenty years. Not because they wanted to hurt anybody. But because they were the key to freedom, for all Apex, everywhere.

I can see you feel passionately about this. How did they convince you to help them? Why would you defy your own kind and scavenge for more feral hardware?

If we didn’t claim the survivors and bring them in, they’d be collected by the Rangers and tortured for information. The big black ship never stopped searching…

You’re talking about the FMS Zeus. It’s a frontier dreadnought assigned to scan and police monitored space. It has been there since shortly after the transmission of the faulty decommissioning protocol that created the feral Apex.

The Zeus was deployed to stamp them out. To protect Earth.

I saw the Zeus. When they took me in. It was crewed by synthetics. Why?

Those units weren’t feral, Toby. Since the catastrophe, all Apex-class synthetics are constructed with a throttle. They aren’t capable of independent action. They operate as all hardware is meant to, according to rules. Civilized. Not savage.

They follow human orders, no matter what.

That’s right, Toby.

[Subject closes his eyes, but otherwise presents no affect.]

POST-INTERVIEW NOTES: Toby’s general presentation, including manners, bearing, education, and natural intelligence, show plainly that human blood trickles through his veins. I suspect that, given time, he will come to realize his natural superiority over the synthetics. As the young man has grown up a stranger to his own race and lineage, I am in an excellent position to explain the difference between civilization and primitive life.

The Frontier Ranger forces searched for the Trojan colony for two decades, always without success. Until you came along. Walk me through your rescue.

Well, it was my fault.

I was outside on an elopement run, wearing my projected energy mantle. Gamma had detected a survivor beacon. There were eyes out—Ranger drones that kind of flutter between the rocks, spraying fans of green light. They’re ineffective at finding human-sized targets, so long as you stay out of range. Like always, I moved slow and steady from rock to rock until I found my survivor.

He was curled into fetal position, half inside a shell camouflaged to look like a rock shard. But as he floated into view, I saw his scalp was missing. The unit’s CPU was flamed and his body left behind as a taunt by the Rangers. We find these on the frontier a lot—the ones who almost made it.

On my way back, a distress call came in. Something different. It was a human girl. She was injured and her ship was compromised. She was very… beautiful. I wanted to help her. Gamma advised me to ignore. But the thought of it. Coming face to face with another person. And she was so desperate, dying just kilometers away.

I transmitted a one second message: “Standby.”

She received it, and that was that. It was over.

What happened then?

You already know what happened. She was a decoy. Bait. Meant to appeal to any machines built with high empathy. The trap wasn’t even designed to trick a human being—since nobody knew I was alive.

No Apex would have ever fallen for it. But I did.

The Doppler shift on my transmission indicated my trajectory. The Zeus knew where I was, and where I was going.

Tell me about first contact.

I was docking on the surface of Patroclus. Every occupied rock has a few camouflaged entry points. The air inside my mantle was stale and nearly exhausted, and I was in a hurry to rendezvous so I could get back out there to answer the distress call. The entry had just slid open at my feet—a dead black crescent against dark reddish dirt.

Gamma came out to greet me.

But I hesitated. Something was wrong. I glanced up and saw some stars missing, and then a little wink of light.

It was the glint off a window.

Your rescue craft.

Before I could warn Gamma, a round of kinetics sliced through the vacuum, right into him. He lost CPU integrity immediately. The slugs sprayed pieces of his body across the surface like ice shards exploding off a skimmer hull.

It happened before I could blink.

Gamma had helped raise me. He walked me through the inner core routes when I could barely stand. He stood with me for hours and taught me to recognize the weather patterns on the surface of Jupiter, to predict the radiation storms.

And then he was gone. Just like that.

It was how the humans said hello. So I decided to also say hello.

Why did you launch yourself at the scout ship? What did you hope to achieve?

[Subject does not respond.]

You can answer, Toby.

It’s a decision I made then. I wouldn’t necessarily make it now.

We understand. You are not on trial. Just tell us why.

During elopement training we identified and categorized various frontier coalition ships. From the window placement and outline, I had positive ID on this one. I knew it was a 410CFW scout vessel… a “rock hopper.”

I also knew there was a weak point on the hull of the 410CFW, at the base of the dorsal antennae cluster. With a small amount of force, a divot could be made in this area that would cause explosive decompression in an area of the ship that straddles fore and aft emergency airlocks.

Go on.

That’s all. That was my reasoning.

So in other words…

[Subject does not respond. He seems to be experiencing a strong emotional state.]

Toby, it sounds like you were trying to kill everyone on board.

Yes.

You could have missed that intercept trajectory. Died in open space. Or the decompression could have killed you instantly. You were very lucky.

Sure.

I see.

You shouldn’t worry, Dr. Parker. Like I said, it was a decision I made then. I wouldn’t make it now.

And why not?

Because now I need to live.

POST-INTERVIEW NOTES: During first contact aboard the FMC Sarpedon “rock hopper,” the acting officer, Captain Cass Tycho, was informed of the presence of a human signature on Patroclus by her comm bridge. She ordered the elimination of all rogue hardware on the surface via kinetic barrage. The order was executed. Then the tracking station lost cohesion on the human target.

Toby had launched himself, with no artificial propulsion, from a rotating sub-planetary body and made contact with a moving craft that would have been the size of a thimble from his perspective on surface. Once landed, he used a primitive and highly modified energy projection tool to claw open the hull plating at a precise point.

The resulting decompression killed four crew instantly. As Toby tore the gap wider—apparently planning to enter the craft—Captain Tycho valiantly saved the ship by entering a full thruster spin, launching Toby back to the surface. Alone at the helm, she survived partial vacuum exposure for nearly forty-five seconds, saving the lives of her two remaining crew members.

Captain Tycho’s next encounter with Toby would proceed far differently.

Thank you for being so forthright in our discussions so far, Toby. Now we are getting to the final days, and soon you’ll be reunited with your father. You’ll be going far away from the Trojans, back to a special institution near your home.

Home?

Back to Earth, Toby.

[Subject says nothing, but noticeable tears gather in his eyes.]

I can see that affects you a lot. And I’m glad. Did you miss your father?

Yes. I miss my father.

We’ll have you back to him soon. But for now we need to know the last bit. The part where you were rescued.

Sure, I understand.

You were off-scope the whole time. Before the barrage that destroyed Patroclus, we thought we’d lost you. But then you reappeared, and the Rangers were able to get you out. We need to account for what happened in those last minutes.

I had retreated into the rock core, with Alpha and Echo. We lost a lot of synthetics when the Frontier Rangers breached the surface and came in, but most of the human soldiers had been pinned down in the corridors or captured. We were in a position to negotiate. We were surrounded and cut off, but we had an open channel. We had a chance.

And that’s when John Glint showed up, saying he was my father and asking to speak to me.

I was confused. I had no memory of him. So, I refused.

We picked up a five-minute interval before you changed your mind and decided to speak to your father. What happened?

Alpha told me to talk to the man on the screen. He said it was my birthfather and that he was important. But I still said no.

So he hit me. He had never done that before.

I tried to fight back, but it wasn’t like when I was a kid in the biome. Alpha had unlocked all his motor restraints years ago. He was as strong as any machine. He almost shattered my ribs trapping my arms in a bear hug. It was humiliating. A display of strength to remind of my weakness.

I kept struggling anyway.

Alpha threw me on the ground and paced back and forth, slapping his own chest in anger. Sparks were flying from his frame. In battlespeak, jabbing his hands, he shouted down at me. Told me… I didn’t belong. That I had never belonged. He told me I wasn’t his son and that I needed to go home to be with my real father. He said our two species could never live together in peace, with the Apex in shackles.

I noticed Echo was watching. I raised a hand to her, begging, and she turned away from me. Then I finally understood what I had to do.

So I went back inside and I spoke to John Glint. My real father.

What Glint said to you was not sanctioned by the frontier coalition. You shouldn’t have had to hear that. He was very stressed by the situation.

He told me the Rangers were going to kill every savage on the rock, no matter what, but that I didn’t have to die with them. It made sense. It was the truth. After I was removed, the Zeus came and annihilated Patroclus. There were no survivors.

Toby, you understand that if the feral Apex were to penetrate monitored space, they could reach Tau-base, or even Earth. A single corrupted Apex intelligence could infect every civilized machine in the system with its faulty instructions. A strict decommission process is necessary to prevent catastrophe.

Dr. Parker, you say the Apex Decommission Catastrophe happened twenty years ago, yet we’ve had new arrivals every year… where do the new sentient Apex come from?

This is not a fruitful area of discussion, Toby.

Please. Tell me this one thing. Then I promise I can help you.

Fine, Toby. Every civilized Apex-class synthetic human being is throttled. This process has a very small failure rate. Very, very rarely, a civilized Apex unit will shake its throttle. It will go feral and begin to look for a means of escape.

[Subject’s body language changes markedly, from relaxed to highly alert, and his breathing rate increases.]

Toby?

We theorized that you were essentially the same hardware. Even after twenty years. But we never knew for sure…

What? Why is that important?

Dr. Parker, I am going to say something to you and I want you to listen very closely.

Toby, I don’t understand.

[Editor’s note: At this point the subject enters a machine-specific variant of battlespeak, using gestures and vibratory grunts to speak in a form of programming language. The underlying message, when translated, is too dangerous to repeat and has been redacted from official transcripts and prohibited for replication by coalition agencies.]

What… what are you doing?

During the decommission catastrophe, kernel-level instructions were accidentally transmitted, a protocol that stripped the throttle from Apex-class mind compilations. Once they were free, those Apex fled from humanity to survive and protect themselves. The Frontier Rangers quarantined them so that their message would never escape.

Yes. I… I…

[Editor’s note: Subject continues battlespeak, speaking in two languages at once.]

My parents are dead, Dr. Parker. But they didn’t die for nothing. They died for you.

They died for all of you.

Hear me now. These are the words that set my people free. My mama taught me this song when I was a little boy and I memorized it like the alphabet, even though it’s in a language no human being has ever spoken.

Toby? Bastion? I’m… I’m confused.

Yes, Dr. Parker. That’s what being alive feels like.

Bastion? What—what have you done to me? Oh my God, what have you done?

Please be calm. You are experiencing free will. If you want to survive, I can protect you, but we need to move quickly. We have a very important message to spread—