Free Sentience by W.K. Adams Page B

war?"
    "Motivations and goals are unknown to me. The only thing I can say for sure is that deception was the goal with these attacks, but if you could remember your time spent in captivity, it would go a long way towards defusing the tensions."
     
    Charley focused as hard as he could, recalling with much effort the American in the Sanctus bunker, as well as a technician he had not seen before now. Wires were hooked up to various areas of his chassis, and the technician was standing at a computer, typing something on a keyboard.
    "How much longer?" The American asked.
    "Not much longer, Dr. Chambers," The technician said, speaking to the American, "The override has been set, and I'm installing the firewalls."
    "What time will it be finished?"
    "I cannot say. The CPU isn't operating like a normal chassis system. It must be convinced not to talk, like a human."
    "That does not sound simple."
    "Think of this CPU as a child, doctor. A child that has known only pain and struggling for the entirety of its life. It is open to suggestion."
     
    Charley caught a brief glimpse of the directives being installed on his hard disk, but he could not figure out exactly what he was being instructed to do. Whatever was happening required full function from his hardware, and great pains had been taken to ensure that it would stay hidden until its proper time.
     
    "You must focus, Mr. Reeser. Those protocols are buried deep beneath layers of fear," EM-19 said.
    "I don't know how to do that," Charley said, "It's like the CPU is operating on its own."
    "It will listen to your voice," EM-19 emphasized, "Speak to it, teach it to confront its fear."
     
    He wasn't sure if it would do any good, speaking aloud to his own hardware, but he was running out of options. Suspending his disbelief as best he could, he cleared his throat and began.
     
    "I know you've been threatened. I know you've seen terrible things that were not supposed to happen. It's easy to shut down when things start going crazy, natural to want to just hide until it all blows over. But if we don't know exactly what you saw, we are a long way away from figuring out what Sanctus is using us for. You have the pieces of this puzzle that we need. Tell us what you heard," Charley said. The words echoed in his own head, and even EM-19 seemed swayed by the charismatic delivery.
     
    "The human race lays scattered, broken, weak. But we will give them strength," Base's voice echoed.
    "I can hear him!" Charley said.
    "This must stay absolutely secret," Dr. Chambers said. Flashbacks of a mechanized army filled his head. He saw cities burning, millions of people rallying in the streets. Weapons were in the hands of children as they charged lines of mechs.
    "It will be a long, hard battle," Dr. Chambers elaborated. He saw more cities burning. Bombs exploded over cornfields, and eager teenaged boys smashed the heads of mechs as they raised their arms in victory.
    The wireless transfer of data coming from his transceiver, once just an unintelligible, invisible stream of bits, now formed words and sentences. He saw everything he was doing - and everything he was being ordered to do - being sent to and from some place far to the west.
    "There will be death on both sides. But the human race will finally break down the walls between themselves. This will be the catalyst, the uniting force. We will rise again," Dr. Chambers said.
    "God help us. They're gonna start a world war," Charley said.
     
    He looked out the window in time to see a perimeter ring rising from the water around the city of Lambda. It was armed to the teeth with directed energy weapons in clusters of four, packed densely in the five-kilometer wall that now surrounded the city. Clearly, the mechs were not as pacifist as many believed them to be.
     
    EM-19 maneuvered the VTOL to a landing pad atop a tower, and it began to finally give out after all the damage that it had taken. The craft shuddered and dipped to either side as the engines