Feb 25, 2057, 1334 Hours (UTC -5)

Arlington VA, United States of America

Baron Nucleonics Research and Development Facility

“We’re gonna run through weapons training today, weapon by weapon. Each one has an accuracy percentage and we’re not allowed to move on until you make it within the time-limit. Treat it like a video game, I guess,” Xolani said.

“I don’t really play video games,” Apple replied from atop the simulation platform.

“That simulator’s a game, girl. You play ‘em now. And you’re gonna be playin’ a hell of a lot more.”

Apple sighed. So many hours in the simulator was giving her headaches. Her parents had made sure she didn’t ruin her eyesight with too much screen time unlike her older sister, but it felt like being a pilot was nothing but screen time. She wasn’t silly enough to think she was ready to practice in the TOCU itself. For one thing it was illegal until she was 16. For another, she was still falling down in the simulator about 5% of the time, which was way too much for a “million dollar mistake.” That was what Graham called anything that damaged the robot, unless it was something that totaled it, in which case it was a billion dollar mistake and those were okay because the US military would order more.

“First run is gonna be with the grenade launcher. Itll gonna feel like your arm is buzzing. Don’t stiffen up, but don’t hold it so loose you don’t have aim. The trick is to thread the needle between the two,” Xolani said.

Instantly the black screen Apple was staring at became a 360-view of the training field out in Paris, Virginia.

The only Baron Nucleonics location Apple had been to so far was the R&D/Hub Facility on Theodore Roosevelt Island. Even though she was technically the pilot of the USM Tsukamoto, she had never even seen her TOCU in-person, or even been to one of the five deployment bases. On her own initiative she had memorized the five: Paris Wing in Virginia, Forks Wing in Washington, Viera Wing in Florida, East Anglia Wing in the UK, and Maejima Wing in Japan. Plus manufacturing sites throughout what remained of the free world. By this point she knew the Paris Wing intimately, assuming it resembled the simulation.

Apple looked down. The displayed hand of the TOCU looked almost exactly the same as the unarmed load-out. The only sign of anything different was a solid metal brick in one of the modular weapon slots in the forearm. This housed the entire firing mechanism and ammunition—the count of which appeared in the bottom right of the screen as 300/300—and fed into the robot’s palm. She marched over the tarmac to the scorched dirt field which served as the firing range. Old cars were set up as targets.

Words appeared at the top of the screen:

Completely destroy 30 cars in two minutes without going below 200 rounds.

“Wait, I only have four seconds for each!?” Apple said.

“Yes ma’am! Better be fast and accurate, huh?” Xolani replied, starting the timer immediately.

1:59.26

“I wasn’t ready!”

“You won’t be when shit hits the fan. Start firing!”

1:56.95

Apple raised the robot’s palm towards the first car. A box appeared in the top right telling her both the threat-identification and aim-assistance algorithms were running. The cars shimmered in gold light as though captured in amber and a gentle force adjusted her arm like her mother teaching her how to hold a tennis racket. The adjustment spooked her and Apple fired a burst of three grenades which skittered around her target. The third shot blew the hood off the car and sent shrapnel through the windshield, but the 30/30 count below the objective didn’t change. The simulation apparently did not count a broken windshield as “completely destroying.”

1:46.52

“If you’re gonna use the aim-assist, don’t fight it. Let it do the work. Or switch the assist off. Up to you,” Xolani said.

“Why would I switch it off?” Apple asked, no longer worrying about time since this run was a wash.

“Some pilots wanna aim themselves. I switch it off.”

“Why do you switch it off?”

“The best pilots don’t need it,” Xolani said. “Araari Ahmed whooped ours and China’s asses in the East African War using a busted ass first-gen TOCU with all of Harris’s proprietary AI shit ripped out. If she can do that, I can learn to hit targets in a pristine fourth-gen.”

“How does your accuracy compare?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“In the sim? A little better than the aim-assist. ‘Bout 5% better. In real life?” Xolani paused, as though trying to remember something that was on the tip of her tongue. “I don’t know. It’s pointless to keep track of in-combat accuracy cuz sometimes you’re firing for target suppression or distraction rather than for a kill. And I couldn’t keep track if I wanted cuz a’ the juice they pump us with.”

“The juice?”

Xolani sighed. If she answered every little question Apple had, they would be there all day. It was on her as the girl’s mentor to enforce the whole “no lunch until you blow up fake cars” rule. There wasn’t anything stopping Xolani from blowing off this responsibility. It wasn’t like BN could fire and replace her. But if she decided to screw around, the first explanation people would jump to was that it was because she was a Pan-Democrat and Pannies were all lazy. To say nothing of being black. She was determined to prove them wrong.

“Let’s just go again. I’ll reset the timer,” Xolani said.

Apple frowned. For as long as she could remember, she’d been able to intuitively sense people’s feelings. That was how she had been picked out by Baron Nucleonic’s discovery program. Finding people with the right mutation to pilot a TOCU was like finding a needle in the haystack, but if you targeted people with high levels of empathy and associational thinking, the search became a lot more precise.

With those talents, she could tell Xolani was upset. With what or whom it was difficult to say. Partly it was with Apple herself, she knew, but Xolani in general was a very upset person. The woman didn’t like Graham or Baron Nucleonics or the Department of Defense, or really the United States. As far as Apple knew, the bitter pilot also did not have many friends and when Xolani had free time, instead of traveling the world as many pilots did, she went back to her hometown of Tallahassee.

The one thing that was within Apple’s power to do for her was to complete the mission quicker so she wasn’t wasting Xolani’s time. With that in mind, she shut her eyes, clenched her fists, and focused all of her energy into mastering the grenade launcher. When the timer popped up again, she was ready.

She raised her hand, this time anticipating the AI pulling her like a gravity well towards the target. There was a silent “click” as the AI latched to the car.

Thump. Thump.

Concentrating on the sensation, Xolani was right, the grenade launcher, embedded in the network of metal and electronics felt like a light tickling on her palm. There were two small flashes then a cloud of debris where the grenades detonated against steel, glass, and dirt. Her first instinct was to wait for the cloud to settle and clear, but she realized that would eat up too much of her time and the clock was still ticking. The count at the top of the screen was now 29/30.

Her giant robot arm turned, hydraulics hissing, heart pounding, or maybe it was the haptic feedback from the humming combustion engine. Sweat pricked hot and itchy against her human palms, slipping against the mesh of her pilot suit. Trusting the AI targeting, Apple fell into a rhythm of swivel–latch–shoot. She had never played any of the rhythm games her older sister Juliette liked so much, but she imagined they must feel like this. It was an oddly pleasant experience. It decreased the importance of the thinking and worrying part of her brain and allowed it to be one node among equals in the Apple-TOCU-simulator network of things, a robust process that could lose the worrying brain entirely and continue uninhibited.

“Holy shit,” Xolani said as the timer ticked down to one minute remaining with 0 cars left to destroy. “I think that’s the fastest time I’ve ever seen on the sim. Nice job!”

Apple blushed. It was just a simulation, of course. Doing that in the heat of battle, or even just while operating the real billion-dollar machine was a whole different story. But Xolani’s praise felt good. She had received a ton of praise since joining the Baron Nucleonics Pilot Program, but it all had to do with things that she couldn’t control like her mutation or the fact that she was a, “perfect representative for the Asian-American community,” an accolade which brought to mind the tiny Buddhist temple her family went to on holidays and nothing else.

This was the first time Apple had received praise for a job well done, even if it was blowing up fake cars in a video game. Though, of course, she shared the praise with both Xolani as her instructor and with the programmers who built the targeting algorithm. Actually, as she thought about it, her own role was extremely minor. Any brain plugged into the network could have done that. Maybe even an electronic one.

“I have a question, ma’am— Xolani,” Apple said, reminding herself of Xolani’s order not to be formal with her.

“Yeah?” Xolani said while queuing up the next weapons exercise.

“How come they don’t automate the whole robot? Why are humans necessary for a TOCU to work?” Apple asked.

Xolani’s middle finger paused over the enter key. At first she was irritated with fielding more questions, but this was one her mentee deserved an answer for. “Depends. You want the official answer or the real answer?”

“Both, I guess.”

“The official answer is because full-AI weapons are banned under the Taipei Treaty because they can mistakenly kill non-combatants,” Xolani said.

“Why is that not the real answer?”

“Cuz the US has never given a shit about disarmament treaties. We haven’t even signed the Mine Ban Treaty and those sure as shit kill non-combatants.”

“So what’s the real answer?”

“Humans make better decisions than computers,” Xolani said. “Or rather we, the pilots, make better decisions than they can program a decision tree for. And they can’t drive it remotely either cuz the interface is too complex to allow for lag time. So they’re stuck with us.”

That answer made partial sense to Apple, though she felt like it was only halfway to the truth. It was the cynical side of the complete answer. The side Xolani was inclined to see. But Apple wondered if the other half wasn’t that humans wanted to know that the gigantic, humanoid machines they were looking up to had a human at the helm. TOCUs were awesome and terrifying by themselves. With a human inside, they were more awesome than terrifying. Without a human, they were solely terrifyingr.

“Tell you what,” Xolani said, pressing enter and bringing up a new field full of tanks and bunkers and razor wire. “If we can get through the first half of the TOCU arsenal, I’ll take you out to lunch. My treat.”

“O-Oh, you don’t have to do that Xolani. I’m gonna try my best regardless,” Apple said.

“Yeah, but this is for me. I’m trying to be a good mentor,” Xolani replied.

Xolani was fully aware the star performance in the previous round had something to do with Apple noticing her bad mood. The emotional enmeshment between pilots was a two-way street, and Apple wasn’t the only one who could read how people reacted to her. Sometimes that enmeshment was an enormous pain in the ass, making everyone overly sensitive and aware of each other. Being close to another human being was an abrasive experience, after all. Both people shaved a little off the other. But in combat this empathy was an invaluable asset.

Yet another point in favor of human TOCU pilots, Xolani thought. They worked together seamlessly in a way machines ordered according to hierarchical functions could not. A TOCU-division and its pilots were one seamless entity that took orders from outside itself but not within itself.

Despite being the inventors of the TOCU, the United States, organizing the pilots like a conventional top-down military with leaders and followers, learned the hard way in Somalia that was not how TOCUs and their pilots worked. Losing to the Pan-Republic was inevitable as Mr. Robicheaux once told her and she believed him. After all, he was one of the pilots that had fought and lost there.

“Next up is the 105mm cannon,” Xolani said.