Polis Kyiv, The Palace of Sports
Alisa Chernykh, August 12, 2049, 10:15 AM
The Palace of Sports was rebuilt back in 2030 and had been specialized in hosting e-sports events, as well as competitions involving robotics and cyborgs for nine whole years already. That day, it was packed just about to the rafters, noisy like a giant hive. All five arenas were utilized, even though it was only qualifying rounds. Understandably, so because the Student Continental League, despite the name, was the last step before the World Championship. So, the stakes were high, and there were going to be some very interesting contestants. After all, it was an opportunity to meet future contenders from around the world, observe their tactics and way of fighting.
The air was replete with numerous video drones from professional and amateur studios alike, sports agencies, and, of course, international corporations, without which no global event in the world went.
It should be noted that “Robot Battles,” which had been around since the early 2000s, had evolved into two completely different but very popular disciplines. The first was the classic – battles at the range in realistic combat conditions. The second one was a flashy spectacle where anthropomorphic battle machines faced off in hand-to-hand combat. Different weight classes, up to five tons, many difficulty levels, complete control or autonomous – lots of categories comprised one of the most popular forms of entertainment worldwide. Billions of views and fans. Tremendous amounts of money.
“It’s a total frenzy in arena five right now!” a commentator’s voice rang out throughout the stadium. In the weight class below two-and-a-half tons, direct control, overall difficulty of under three thousand points on the Reinhardt scale, two exceptional fighters were pitted against each other, captivating most of the online audience. The battle was approaching the finale, and the bulk of the drones seemed to be recording and broadcasting it.
“Are you seeing that?!” The commentator waved his hands expressively. “Only two minutes on the clock! Who would’ve thought these two would put up a show worthy of the highest league!”
“Precisely, Timofei!” the second commentator joined in. “This fight, Maksim Chernykh versus Emilio Ojeda, will definitely be a highlight of today’s qualifying rounds for the Student Continental League, at least as far as the direct control category is concerned!”
“How?! How does Maksim do that? First minute in, the guy drops the ball and loses his shield! That said, he continues confidently blocking his opponent’s attacks!”
“Not anymore! Emilio has him cornered after unleashing a series of fast attacks with the lower arms! With speed like that, he has no choice but to play defense!”
“That’s a game, Konstantin! I see that Maksim has put the fuel cells in forced mode. He lacks the power to block body attacks. What an excellent series of punches on Emilio’s part!”
“But the endurance Maksim is displaying is nothing to sneeze at either! We’re going to have to watch the repeat; those split-second blocks are absolutely incredible!”
“But it’s costing him a significant amount of energy, as we’re seeing on the monitor. And that means the climax is close! Whoa, take a look at that! What a development! Talk about turning the tables! That’s what Maksim was saving his last booster for! A brilliant strike, and Emilio loses his balance! Wow!”
“Yes, Timofei, this is it, the culmination of this fight! Emilio gets thrown against the barrier!”
At the last moment, the three-meter-tall battle machine attempted to soften the impact, taking the blow with both of its hands. The fight was over, but Emilio tried to minimize his fighter’s damage.
Suddenly, the space between the robots was filled by a bright flash. In one thousandth of a second, a sphere portal appeared and began growing rapidly. In another thousandth of a second, the field partially covered both robots. Its border, as if with a laser, accidentally cut off the control node of the main fuel cells on Emilio’s robot.
The powerfully generated energy quickly accumulated to a critical level, and the entire energy block detonated after several milliseconds. What happened next was a result of unbelievable circumstances. Because the explosion of the fuel cells itself wasn’t a big deal; the reinforced barrier around the ring was built with such a scenario in mind. Even if two reactors of five-ton superheavy machines had exploded simultaneously, it wouldn’t have been enough to destroy it.
But the blast had hit the newly-formed portal in that brief period of time when it was still vulnerable and messed up its structural flows. All the energy accumulated by that point spiraled out of control.
A dozen long “plasma whips” formed, stemming from the ruined portal’s center. Scorching everything in its wake, the fiery death raged through the barrier, the stands, and the ceiling. This inferno lasted only a few seconds before the epicenter of the chaos exploded for good.
The rooms closest to the arena suffered the most, and it just so happened that one of them was the operator’s room. Indeed, according to traditions established by the founders of this sport, the operator, the engineer, and the support team must be stationed as close to their fighter as possible. Of course, no one uses remote control anymore – there’s VR for that, and, theoretically, the operator could be anywhere. But sport is sport; a lot of it is done for show rather than safety.
Max and Alisa were on a glazed elevated balcony right next to the barrier, and, thankfully, it hadn’t been hit by a “plasma whip” directly. However, because the barrier had been damaged, they couldn’t avoid the shock wave. Maksim’s VR chair got ripped from the floor and hurled at the wall, along with Alisa.
Flames erupted in the arena where the plasma struck. There was a devastating shrill scream at the top of someone’s voice. One second later, the entire stadium was in a state of panic. Loud screams. People stampeded toward the exit, trying to make a break for it. There was blood on the floor already – someone got trampled to death.
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With a blare of sirens, the security and police drones rose from the stadium’s hangars, deployed their riot shields, and streaked right into the crazed mob. Some people weren’t lucky – the blow broke their limbs, sending blood spatter all around. But this tactic had paid off; the drones managed to break up the dense throng, direct the people toward emergency exits, and prevent further losses.
The fire department’s heavy robots and drones managed to gradually push the fire back toward the arena with foam. The paramedics dispatched; small, nimble diagnostic drones scattered throughout the stands, evaluating the damage and the number of casualties. The most severely injured ones were being picked up and moved through the air by “dolphins” – nimble little machines meant for individual evacuation of badly wounded people from disaster and accident zones. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough of them; all the machines at the stadium were already carrying the victims away toward the nearest hospital.
Hepius robots emerged from hidden niches to provide urgent medical care. Spreading throughout the stands and leaping over smoldering mounds of rubble, they stooped over the wounded.
The air was filled with smoke and the suffocating stench of burned plastic.
Alisa crawled out from under a plastic shield and a pile of debris. Quickly scanning the area, she spotted Maksim and rushed to his side.
“Maksim, please don’t die!” Ripping the safety straps out, she threw aside the chair that was pinning him down and dropped to her knees.
Alisa’s body wasn’t meant for medical assistance, but she could at least perform basic diagnosis – she had the required gauges and knowledge. A quick check showed that Maksim was in a coma, had apnea, and no pulse. After examining his heart, Alisa detected ventricular fibrillation.
Not good. Urgent CPR and, most importantly, defibrillation were needed.
Alisa wasn’t about to give up: making sure the airway was clear, she started administering an indirect cardiac massage. In her second thread, she continued scanning the area for a medbot niche. It didn’t have to be an autonomous machine, a semiautomatic would’ve done the trick – there was bound to be one near an operator’s booth according to safety regulations!
A medbot was required for artificial respiration in addition to defibrillation. Alisa couldn’t do it herself: the android’s body only imitated breathing.
Scanning the balcony yielded no results – no medbots or any medical stations up here. Waiting for help would’ve been a useless affair as well; her third thread kept her up-to-date on the situation, and she had already noticed that all the drones and machines, including the firefighters, had been withdrawn and were hurriedly leaving the Palace without even finishing their jobs.
Browsing the venue’s website, she quickly found an emergency guide and opened a level-by-level plan with all the public medical stations and other machines marked. Great! Behind the door, to the left, at the end of the hallway, there was a niche with a versatile semiautomatic mobile medical station up for grabs.
“I have to leave Max for a minute!” Alisa scrambled to her feet, whipping around sharply, and at that moment, a red-haired cyborg girl jumped onto the balcony in a cloud of smoke.
Deftly dampening the inertia, which displayed her experience in combat acrobatics, the stranger stopped in the center of the room. She stood up, and her knees twisted with a loud whistling sound, disabling the afterburner mode – she must’ve jumped up here on boosters. The cooling vents on her bloody arms opened up for a moment, shooting out hot air.
image [https://i.imgur.com/6xDhm35.jpg]
Glancing around the room, the girl asked concisely, “Need help?”
“Medbot needed ASAP. There’s one back there,” Alisa said, pointing at the door, “to the left, all the way to the end. Niche. Defibrillator. Resuscitation.”
“OK!” The redhead turned the afterburner mode back on in a flash, and her knees twisted again. Quickly crouching with her fingers touching the floor, the girl launched herself toward the doorway. She managed to spin her body mid-air in a way that allowed the inertia-dampening blow to knock down the door.
Another leap, and the cyborg girl was out of Alisa’s sight. In the meantime, she continued giving an indirect cardiac massage to Max. There was the sound of metal-on-metal, and a loud shout resounded,
“Got it. ‘Quick start’ is on! Bringing!”
Some seconds later, the medbot showed up at the entrance. The young woman deftly hit the stopper on the right wheel, turned the bot around, helping it through the doorway, and rolled it up to Alisa.
“Connecting, I’ll take the control,” Alisa said without moving her lips and opening her mouth wide. With a soft pop, she shot a smart cable’s connector out of her mouth and quickly pulled a few meters of it out with her hands.
“So, you’re an android?” The cyborg raised her eyebrow in surprise.
“Yes.” Alisa gave a nod, getting access to the bot’s main outlet on its control panel and plugging the cable in.
The medbot came online, its mechanical arms extended, it turned and approached Maksim up close. The machine lowered its stance, clicking its fixed wheels. Alisa carefully picked up Max with the mechanical arms and put him on the operating table. On the bot’s front side, the initial examination system started, extending the wide ring of the diagnostic complex with many sensors, gauges, and an X-ray unit.
“Amazing! I thought you were a cyborg.”
“My name is Alisa,” she said, extending her hand...
#Alisa.Thread0.Primary
“So, what does the diagnostic complex tell us?”
“There’s a silver lining – no cranial damage. Help has been given timely, so ischemia is minimal. Okay, looking relatively lucky thus far, but there’s no way to ascertain the damage without MRI. Thus, we’ll have to wait until he comes to. Or do it at the hospital if we even make it to there. No! We will definitely make it!
What else? X-ray, X-ray… What’s this? That’s bad – the lumbar spine is fractured. His legs must be paralyzed. While resuscitating, full immobilization must be prepared. I can’t do more outside a hospital. Once there, my brother will be treated with an implant that will reconnect the nerves and dissolve when he’s healed completely.
The right leg is broken: closed fracture, mild hemorrhage for now. We’ll patch it up with the medbot and take a closer look at the hospital.
The rest of the damage is minor – some bruises, albeit severe…” Continuing resuscitation, Alisa moved the secondary arms over the broken limb. With the medbot’s help, she successfully set the bone and stopped the bleeding. Securing the leg, she attached a magnetic sticker on it with information about the treatment for the hospital robot.
#Alisa.Thread2
“Resuscitating.”
“Airway clear.”
“Starting chest compressions.”
“Starting CPR.”
“Defibrillator charge. Ready. Clear.”
“Successful. Sinus rhythm restored.”
“Continuing resuscitation procedures.”
#Alisa.Thread4
Since the majority of the machines were transporting the wounded to hospitals, and the rest had been withdrawn by someone, there wasn’t a single available medical drone nearby.
Not good. Let’s try to get through to the ER.
# Calling the district’s emergency department...
# We’re sorry, all the lines are busy at the moment.
# Your application will be processed by GMAI (Global Municipal Artificial Intelligence) Vesalius37.
“What the heck?” Alisa thought. “What could’ve happened in the last couple of hours that the first ten Vesaliuses aren’t available? An accident at a stadium wouldn’t keep thirty-six of them busy, no matter how many people died! I think…”
# District Police Department.
# Login request… authorization…
# Status: City police AI volunteer…