Chapter 11: Stoicism is Overrated

After a few minutes, I felt Ohmu’s hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw the unit’s face illuminated with a frown.

“I am sorry for your sadness, Joan. Do you wish to learn what has transpired here?”

Did I? It had clearly been a last stand of some sort. From the amount and types of debris, it must have happened years after the first attack. Did it matter? I looked over at the tiny bones lying nearby. Yes, it did matter. These people deserved to have their story told.

“What happened here Ohmu?”

“Here is the analysis of the data I was able to extract from the remaining intact drone. This cavern was the last redoubt of a group of twenty-one survivors of the initial attack and of the follow-on drone delivered nano-plague eradication missions. It is likely that a very small fraction of humanity would survive the initial onslaught of illness and develop immunity. Those few humans on this island who proved resistant became aware of the drones who continued to arrive and spread new nano-plague.

“They concealed themselves from the delivery drones and had banded together and hid in this cavern where they managed to evade the occasional drone reconnaissance flights that had followed. After twenty-three years of surviving in this cavern while trying to forage about the island and remain hidden, they were detected. The presence responsible for this region of your planet created a new force of mobile units specially designed to physically enter the caverns and eradicate the surviving humans.

“As you can see, the humans fought back. But eventually, enough units had been sent that the last humans were killed. The intact mobile unit we found closer to the cave entry was left to ensure that the cavern would not be used as such a shelter ever again. Its final recorded data entry was fifty-five years after the last human had been killed and the unit’s power reserves had finally neared depletion.”

Ohmu paused at that and I saw the unit scanning the room before continuing. “Though my data is currently limited, I have no records or knowledge of any humans who survived in other locations longer than these did. It is remarkable that they did so for as long as they did.”

My mood for cave exploration was long gone. I got up and went to leave the fortified chamber. As I did I noticed a skull near the final burned mobile unit. Near the bones were the remains of a pair of eyeglasses. I bent and retrieved one of the lenses. I rubbed the dust off and saw it was still smooth and intact. I placed the lens in the pocket of my stealth suit.

“Let’s go Ohmu,” I said.

I paused near the entry at the intact remains of the mobile unit sentry.

“Do we need to do something about this unit you accessed?”

“Yes, Joan, please proceed ahead at least fifty meters and I will dispose of the sentry unit when you have cleared the cavern and its entry.”

I left Ohmu there and exited the cavern. I had re-engaged my stealth features with my full hood up and was standing on the grassy clearing near the cavern opening when Ohmu came jogging up out of the recess.

“Joan, fire in the hole!”

I ducked away just as a BOOM shook the clearing. A cloud of dust blew out the cavern entry and the rumble of a few dislodged boulders falling down followed.

“How the hell did you do that Ohmu?” I asked, surprised.

“I used my self-destruct charge, Joan. I will need to replace it when we return to Nautilus.”

Hmm. My little friend was full of surprises.

Back at the campsite I had a quick lunch and decided to take an early afternoon nap in the tent. I was still in a funk from what we had found in the cavern and I thought that maybe a bit of sleep would help. I’d always found that any unpleasant incident seemed more distant if you separated yourself from it by a period of sleep.

I awoke a few hours later to the noise of a gentle rain coming down. Ohmu unsealed and entered the tent. I saw that the little humanoid unit was carrying a mug of something that smelled like hot chocolate. It sat near my feet and handed me the mug. I took it skeptically. Hot chocolate? Uh, what the hell. I took a sip. The hot chocolate had a 20-proof kick! I took another sip.

“Thank you Ohmu. This is perfect.”

“Joan, I have sent the larger aerial drone up to verify the height and coverage of the cloud cover and estimate that the light intermittent rain will last into the evening. I would suggest that diving would be a suitable activity for this afternoon as the stealth suit will not be needed due to the heavy cloud cover.”

Ohmu then moved to leave the tent. As she stood, I noticed that there was a hole in her formerly smooth crotch right where her anus would have been.

“Ohmu, what’s the deal? You have a hole in your backside!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, Joan, the hole is the result of the removal of my self-destruct charge which I used to destroy the enemy mobile unit. The device was a small cylindrical linear shaped charge located directly below my main processor and memory storage areas. Until I can replace the destruct charge I am left with the open socket which you observed.”

Huh! Ohmu’s brains were in her belly apparently. I wondered what was in her head.

As she went to step out of the tent, she hesitated and looked back at me. “Does the hole in my backside make you wish you still had a penis, Joan?”

I spewed a mouthful of alcoholic hot chocolate into the side of the tent. When I recovered, she just flashed her grin and left the tent, leaving me there alone to stew in my freshly punked status. I finished the remains of my drink trying to keep the mental image of the humanoid robot’s backside out of my mind. Soon I decided to act on her earlier suggestion of diving and stripped out of my day clothes and went to find the diving gear.

And that was how I spent the next three hours until dark. The lagoon off the southwest end of the island was shallower than the one off the northeast had been. But that also meant that the risk of larger sharks was reduced. Ohmu showed up with Otto about ten minutes after I had entered the water and both the bio-drone and the mobile unit kept me in sight.

The rain was light enough that the seawater remained clear and did not spoil my dive. As I was staying in the shallows I was just using a small rebreather that added oxygen while removing the carbon dioxide. The power pack for the rebreather was good for about two hours which set the end limit for my dive. I had brought the spear gun and planned to shoot a few fish for supper.

A few hours later, I walked out of the water to find that it was getting dark. The rains had stopped but the skies remained overcast. Ohmu had already returned to camp, along with the fish I had harvested, as her power reserves were beginning to run low. I took off my dive flippers and found the beach shoes that Ohmu had left on the beach for me. She had also left the weapon sealed in its holster, which I strapped to my hip and began walking the half kilometer back to the campsite.

I got back to camp to find that Ohmu had gotten a fire started. This morning, we had found enough firewood to fuel a few hours of campfire and had kept it out of the rain with a tarp. The black humanoid unit had also cleaned and prepared the fish which was now boiling in a kettle on the fire. Next to the kettle was a cast iron pan with biscuits baking.

“What kind of soup or stew are you making?” I asked, already smelling the spices.

“It is a Brazilian recipe called Moqueca and is made from fish simmered in coconut milk with onion, tomatoes, chilies and lime. I have also prepared cooked white rice to serve as a base for the stew. The combination should go well with the baking powder biscuits I am also preparing.”

It sounded delicious and half an hour later, I knew it was delicious as I thanked Ohmu with a hearty belch. Even with the occasional gentle rain, it stayed fairly warm. I hesitated on my choice of evening beverages and decided to stay with a glass of single malt as it was not quite warm enough for iced beer. I was still thinking over the scene I had found in the cavern earlier in the day and the mood was somber. Ohmu sat beside me on the log and gave me a slight hug with her little arm. As always, I was surprised at her warm temperature.

“I am sorry for you, Joan. I am sorry for the humans who died on this island after struggling to survive for so long after the initial attack. Their efforts were a credit to your species.”

“Do you really feel sorry? Can you feel sorry?” I asked looking over at her manikin-like black face.

“I sense your sadness. This results in a degradation of your ability to survive and a lessening of the chances of your succeeding in attaining your … no, ’our’ goals. Since those two parameters are key to my own survival and success I feel the impact as a strong negative. Is this the same as feeling sorry? I cannot say, but I do feel a loss … a sense of unwell or a suboptimal status. I choose in this instance to label these sensations as ‘sorrow’ at this time.”

Hmm. I guess I’d have to accept that my moods had some impact on this intelligence. Whether or not I fully understood what that impact was, I had to acknowledge it existed.

“Thank you Ohmu. I will feel better tomorrow. I am sure the suffering here was nothing compared to what happened in most other places. I’ll just have to accept it and move on. We’ve got a job to do and that is to find out how to get humanity back moving forward and not under the control of an intelligence able to render us practically extinct.”

Ohmu did not respond except to just be there for me. I had to admit, it was nice to feel the touch of another … well, just of another. I knew the humanoid mobile unit was not alive, but it certainly was not dead either. It was something different. An amazing creation that was the product of a long evolution, certainly as complex as my own biological evolution. And it was now dependent upon me as much as I was dependent upon it.

***

Three days later I was back aboard Nautilus and again fully into my daily shipboard routine. Nautilus was on course towards Sri Lanka at eleven knots. We had first headed north-east for a few days to avoid the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Maldives which lay south of India. Later today, having traveled far enough eastward, we would alter course to a more northerly bearing which would put us off Sri Lanka in four days.

The four bio-drones were packed away in their small medical crèches, sleeping, and rejuvenating until they were again needed. Ohmu had rebuilt her self-destruct charge and installed it into her backside and was again whole with no hole. I was glad (and a bit surprised) that after her initial teasing to me about her new orifice, she had not brought it up again.

Naomi and I had discussed our last shore visit and how our gear and drones had performed. We started planning on how to get to the target coordinates on Sri Lanka which were twenty-some kilometers away from shore. To make matters worse, Sri Lanka currently had substantial active enemy A.I. presences. We’d learned that the southern coast of the island contained an orbital launching station like the northern tip of Madagascar and the African coast did.

There was a launching location at the southern end of India and also numerous launching points in the equatorial regions of Indonesia and Malaysia. We had stopped last night and surfaced for a few hours while Naomi had listened in to the satellite chatter and kept watch on the skies. She had directly detected the fusion emissions indicating a launch from Somalia and had learned of one from Malaysia via intercepted communications. All the launches had been towards the east and towards an equatorial location. Whatever the master A.I. was building was big and needed a lot of support from the ground.

So, our approach to the inland location of Sri Lanka would be very risky. Naomi and Agent had compiled detailed maps of the area over the past two centuries. The data had come from old mapping information that had once been stored on the old Internet and also from newer images and data downloaded from the current orbital satellites. This was somewhat spotty as they had to piece the information from scraps sent globally in various updates and information dumps.

I still remembered the coordinates which were 06.88213 latitude x 80.04864 longitude. The precision of a hundred-thousandth of a degree meant that they were accurate to a bit less than a meter. The location had been a suburban area approximately twenty-three kilometers east-southeast of the former Sri Lankan city of Colombo.

The exact location was in the northeast area of the Batawala neighborhood. The old Google Earth images of the location showed what looked like a small shrine alongside a narrow-paved road. The other side of the road showed a cluster of buildings and was labeled as a school of some sort.

“Naomi, I just remembered something about India and this region moving fairly quickly northward. Are you compensating for this when showing the coordinates on Sri Lanka?”

“It is correct that the island is now approximately two meters north of where it was in your time Joan. I have made the required adjustments,” she said.

Naomi pointed out that a few hundred meters away to the southwest was a large power substation. I spotted the high voltage lines and towers leading to the location from the north and southwest. If there were a hidden base in that area, it had direct access to the Ceylon power grid. The area around the location had been covered with jungle looking trees and clearly saw a great deal of rainfall. We found that May was one of the wettest months for the region so I would be getting wet.

The nearest enemy base still in operation (very limited operation) was a former chemical waste remediation facility in the city of Colombo itself. It had been tasked with cleaning up hundreds of hazardous sites in and around the city, even extending past our target location to the east. The next closest base (and one still very much in operation) was the orbital launch station a hundred and twenty kilometers to the southeast. This facility was located on the southern Sri Lankan coast near the old shipping port by Hambantota.

There were two other bases still active on the island. One was located on the northeast corner of the island at the famous natural harbor town of Trincomalee. The second was located at the north end near the new land bridge mostly connecting the island to India. The rest of the island was an unknown, although Naomi suspected that the total number of mobile units or other devices in operation would be limited. The A.I. did have a fairly updated map of the various microwave communication relay towers crossing the island as well as the routes of a dozen buried fiber-optic links.

We discussed how we would get our drones to the designated coordinates. Naomi recommended two options. The first was to use stealth gliders. These would be taken aloft well offshore via Habu. Once at a high enough altitude they would be released and would glide inland and land in the vicinity of the target coordinates. The second option was to use a nearby river, the Kelani Ganaga, to infiltrate the drones to within three kilometers of the target coordinates.