The best thing about the Lake Washington project is the level of control that the nature of the facility gives us over the workforce. We can control the air they breathe, the food they eat, the water they drink. If they do anything we don’t like, then we can stop paying them in what they need to survive.
Of course, the danger of using null-citizens as a disposable and renewing labor force is that they may seek to speak to the general public outside. If we let these people speak to former family or friends, it could breed discontent in the wider labor force.
That is why we propose cutting the entire complex off from the Internet. If we, instead, use only our intranet system and allow only whitelisted devices to interact directly with any outside address, we can entirely control both the information coming into and going out of the Underlake. And, of course, if the population becomes unruly, we can even blacklist individuals from the Intranet, or shut the thing down entirely to prevent coordination of any illicit activities.
Never has a labor force been kept so secure. The future, it looks bright!
* A presentation from Vice President of Sanitation Human Resources, Christina Roberts, to the CWM Board of Directors, 2042
Luke
Scrambling backwards away from the disabled truck, Luke and his younger friend both covered their retreat with their shouldered submachine guns. There had been no sign of the larger Antithesis, but it was sending the doglike Model Threes in waves after them. That was definitely odd behavior.
They’d killed at least a dozen Threes so far. The P90 fired tiny 5.7mm bullets in quick bursts, but it was incredibly effective at punching holes through the fleshy torso of the little hungry plant-things. The bullets were pointed and he remembered reading something about the caliber being designed as a special personal defense round used to penetrate ballistic body armor back in the late 20th century. Luke guessed that this Cold War-era ingenuity still worked well enough.
“Intayis, can you talk to me about Model Sixes? Where is it?”
Intayis’s voice came through his aug gear, a sign that she was also broadcasting to Zim. Model Sixes are more intelligent than any other form of Antithesis in the single digit range. They’re commonly used as early command and control units, at least until later models like Fourteens appear to take their place. They are not as intelligent as humans, but it would be a close contest.
“Well, that’s not good.” Luke grunted as he got to one of the massive concrete footings of the pillars which held up the roof of the lake complex. Seeing movement, he aimed quickly and walked a line of bullets along the path of a Model Three as it ran to his side, trying to flank,
“Intayis, box of ammo. And I need something more powerful. Give me a machine gun on a tripod. No, a rotary cannon. Something with a lot of ammunition. We are going to hold here until we see the Six. I don’t want to be running from it, if it might be chasing us towards something. And some hearing protection, build it into a couple of helmets.”
New Purchase: FN P90 Preloaded Magazines, 5.7mm, JHP, +P, x10
Points reduced to… 505!
New Purchase: XM214 Microgun, Ammunition, Enhanced Tripod
Points reduced to… 455!
New Purchase: Enhanced Combat Helmet, Exile Modified, Hearing Protection x2
Points reduced to… 435!
Three boxes thumped to the ground behind him. Then, half a second later, a meaty thunk could be heard as an entire minigun, on a custom and pre-assembled mount, clunked to the ground right in front of Luke.
“Zim, get your helmet on. I’ll cover you, then you cover me, and then, we use the minigun to flush out the Six. It’s time to get serious.”
His young friend had a crazy look in his eyes. Zim had been through a lot of shit in his short life and spent half his free time in cracked first person shooter ‘mesh sims, but this was a bit much to ask of the kid. Still, he’d done well. Maybe it was some leftover effect from the Samurai meds which helped save his life? The kid dropped to his knees and started fastening the chin straps of the plastic helmet.
Luke kept scanning what passed for the horizon. In the muted, constant light of the Underlake, everything had a sinister cast he’d gotten used to about a decade ago, but it made it difficult to find the enemy unless they moved. Thankfully, Model Threes moved all the damn time. There. A pack of three coming from the right-hand side. Three quick bursts, and he had made thirty more points.
After a few more seconds, Z clapped him on the shoulder, yelled that it was his turn, and Luke bent to pick up his own helmet. He saw that Intayis had gone to the trouble of labeling, in his augs, which one was his. He slapped the helmet on his head and felt a gel layer press onto the outside of his ears. A brief pop and he heard more clearly than before. Loud noises were minimized, and potentially threatening softer noises were enhanced. Groovy. The chin straps buckled easily right into place without adjustment, keeping it snug and secure on his head. It probably helped being a super-advanced, fifteen-dimensional artificial intelligence made before the dawn of time when adjusting helmets.
Luke slapped his friend on the back, moved to the big gun, and then stomped on the three buttons at the end of each of the legs of the tripod. A muffled bang could be heard as what he assumed were explosive bolts drove stabilizers into the bedrock which made up the floor of the Underlake. A belt of ammunition ran out of the left side towards a large box slung beneath the gun, suspended from the tripod.
“Alright, Z. It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum.”
Z grinned. “I’m all out of gum, you old fuck. Let’s pulp some aliens.” He got behind the small rotary cannon and started laughing like a kid given his first video game console at Christmas.
“Intayis, can you give me a sensor suite to highlight targets in a 360 degree field? Link it to our augs?”
I can do that. I would recommend a mobile drone. You have an option for that in the Exile catalog.
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“That works. Do it.”
New Purchase: Class 1 LIDAR Repulsor Sensor Drone
Points reduced to… 450!
A hand-sized, circular drone popped into view right by Luke’s hand, and quickly moved about four meters into the air. It started spinning rapidly. Luke started to see small red outlines populate the area around him, refreshing about four times a second.
“Hunh. Smart way to do it.”
The Exiles are not flashy, but everything they build works. This is a modified mining drone, built to move inside tight caverns in asteroids. But it works just as well for this purpose.
Luke grinned as a stream of fire started burping out of the minigun. “How many rounds does that thing have in its hopper?”
One thousand. I took the liberty of selecting armor piercing ammunition.
“Excellent.” Luke shouldered his SMG and started picking off anything moving away from the machine gun’s field of fire. After a few minutes of this, and quite a few dead aliens, his augs pinged with an alert behind him. Glancing back, Luke saw the Model Six charging like a shopper towards the last loss leader on Black Friday. Except, of course, that this deal-seeking shopper must have weighed at least a ton, and was about to eat both him and his friend if Luke didn’t act.
“Oh, shit!” Luke brought up the rocket launcher he’d purchased earlier and pulled the trigger. A bang came from the cheap-feeling tube, and Luke saw the round from the launcher streak towards the Six.
Except it moved. The minivan-sized, six legged monstrosity wasn’t moving predictably. It zigged when Luke thought it would zag, and the rocket flew right between the legs of his opponent.
“Shit!” Scrambling backwards, Luke dropped onto his back and groped around for the second launch tube. He couldn’t find it, so he turned his head, locked eyes on what he needed, grabbed the tube, and looked back towards the charging Six just in time to see the damned thing leaping towards him, where he lay a couple meters from Z’s minigun.
There was no time to plan. Luke brought up the firing tube and fingered the rubber trigger, just as the Six opened its mouth to go in for a bite. The rocket went right down its throat, and the alien convulsed as a whump echoed through the Underlake. The convulsions prevented the large alien from landing directly on him, but it still came damned close. It lay on its side near him, chest heaving. Luke couldn’t hear out of his right ear, probably because of how close the backblast from the rocket launcher had come to his head, but he stumbled to his feet and looked at the minivan-sized, six-legged plant-bear.
It was a mess. The rocket must have been an anti-tank model, because it looked like the innards of the model had been blown clear out the thing’s rear end. Still, it was moving, so he brought back up his P90 and emptied the remainder of the magazine into the thing’s eye. It fell still, and he got the reward notification for killing it.
“Running low on ammo!” Zim yelled behind him
“Intayis, we need to fight a running retreat back towards Juanita Bay. I need to be able to move and cover Zim, and take damage. What do you have for me?”
Your Exiles catalog has a variety of dual-use exoskeletons which are built either for industrial work or to accept armor plating. The armor plating they use appears in Tier 2 of the catalog, but I can substitute human-sourced materials and maintain acceptable effectiveness. It has articulable hands for holding tools or a weapon, an internal power supply, and two independently targeting mounts for point defense weapons.
“Sounds expensive. How much?”
Four hundred points, plus a charge for any weapons. It’s the best I can do with the total you have. What do you want on the mounts?
“Grenade launcher and machine gun. Best ammunition you can get for them. I’m thinking some form of airburst rounds for the grenade launcher, armor piercing for the machine gun.”
And for your hands?
“Give me that Barrett rifle. With a drum magazine. And a bayonet. Armor piercing incendiary rounds.”
New Purchase: Mk I Dual-Use Industrial Exoskeleton, Combat Model, Earth Retrofit
Points reduced to… 122!
New Purchase: Barrett XM500 Anti-Material Rifle, Added Bayonet
Points reduced to… 102!
New Purchase: Mk. 47 Automatic Grenade Launcher
Points reduced to… 87!
New Purchase: SIG XM203 Machine Gun
Points reduced to… 77!
Materializing in front of Luke with a thud was a two and a half meter tall metal suit. It was thick. Barrel chested, and by that, he really did mean as thick as a barrel, it would have towered over the world’s beefiest professional wrestler, from the days when they didn’t just AI-generate the WWE. Slabs of bare, silvered steel covered every available surface without ornamentation, with additional plates behind every seam so that not a hint of the interior showed. The booted feet were twice the size of his own feet, with knee joints oddly higher up than he thought they’d be.
Looking higher on the steel figure, he saw that the elbows were similarly configured. Oh, right. His legs and arms still needed to bend, but they weren’t as long as the limbs of the suit. That made sense. Looking closely at the hands, he saw that even each finger was covered in a layer of dull, silver metal. The helm was a simple cylinder, rather like an old medieval bucket helm, but without visible slits for vision.
To each side of the helm sat the barrels of two weapons. On the left was the stubby grenade launcher, with a belt of small grenades running into a square box. On the right was the longer barrel of what looked like a large infantry rifle, but also belt fed, running into a pouch on the bottom side of the gun.
“Intayis, am I going to be able to see in this?”
Yes. This particular model interfaces with your mind through your Mesh interface. You don’t actually need to physically see through it - with a new program running in your augmented reality software, it will be as if you aren’t even wearing a helmet.
“Groovy.” Luke went around the back of the suit, and the thing unfolded. Each limb’s armor hinged open automatically from the back, followed by the rear chest plate lifting up to reveal a padded interior.
Well, no time like the present. They were low on ammunition, and if there’s one thing Luke knew about Samurai, it’s that their gear was always good shit. He stepped into the back of the armor and let it close around him. After half a second of darkness, his world lit up, and a voice in his head - but not Intayis - greeted him.
Hello, human, designate Lucas. I am the Ghost of this armor, designate Forger. It is pleasant to make your introduction. This armor is fully functional, and is ready to serve both you and the Machine Gods.
The voice was gravelly, low, and sounded male, yet unmistakably alien. It was the syntax, which was just odd, as if someone had learned how to speak English from a robot. This new entity, obviously named Forger, inhabited the armor?
Oh, yes. One quirk of the Exiles is that they tend to… come with… their technology. Did I not mention that?
“No, Intayis, you most certainly did not. Forger, are you an AI like Intayis?”
No. I am a Ghost. I once was as you are now. Now, I am here, with you, in the machine. But I am not like the Machine God who also speaks with you. I am simply Exile.
Luke felt a headache coming on, but there wasn’t any time. He heard the minigun spin empty, and Zim shout, then turn around to yell at him, and then shout again. Luke supposed it was probably rather surprising to turn your back on someone only for them to turn into an eight-foot-tall slab of metal.
It was turning into a very interesting day.