Chapter Eighteen - Meeting of the Greats

“They’re idiots.

If we create AI and they’re not entirely alien to us, then we will know that we’ve failed.”

-Robert Vernes, head of the Open Institute for AI Research, 2029

***

Once I got back at the mall, Manic in tow, I sat around and started to look over our options.

I also started to nurse a migraine.

It wasn’t a period migraine or the kind of thing that happened when you drank a high-addiction soft drink once and then didn’t keep drinking it, but it was instead the far less fun stress-induced kind of pain that throbbed across my head.

Do you want something for that?

Myalis didn’t even need to ask for what. “Yeah, medicate me,” I muttered low enough that only she’d hear. A tiny box appeared on the table before me, and I reached up and pulled my helmet off.

Manic glanced my way, and I found myself being observed a lot more closely than I’d usually be comfortable with. “You’re younger than I thought,” she said.

“I’m legal,” I shot back as I opened the box Myalis gave me, took out a colourful pill, then tossed it back. It had a nice citrusy aftertaste. Nothing happened for a few long seconds, then it felt as if someone were carefully and slowly pouring cool water down atop my head and the pain washed away. “Oh, that’s nice.”

It’s not chemically addictive, but try not to overuse that kind of medication. The last thing either of us need are permanent changes to your brain chemistry.

That was sobering. I sat up in the cheap plastic seat--bolted to the floor, of course--and glanced around. “Where’s Gomorrah and the others?” I asked.

“Sprout’s right there,” Manic said with a nod to her left.

I glanced that way and saw Sprout jogging over. He was wearing a labcoat over a more skin-tight armoured suit, the hems and front of the coat stained green and brown by what looked like dirt and plant stuff. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t too close when the call came in. What’s going on?”

“Give Gomorrah and Johnny a minute,” I said. “She’s the punctual sort, so she won’t be too long in showing up. But... yeah, we’re kinda fucked, so I wanted to hand out new orders and see what we could do to unfuck ourselves before we all die heroically.”

Sprout stared, then nodded. “Okay then,” he said before taking a seat as far from Manic as he could manage. Maybe that was because Manic was sitting on one of those dividers, knees folded up to her chest and fake plants arrayed behind her.

The next to show up was General Wilkinson and Miss Baker, whom I hadn’t realized had returned to Downtown. Gomorrah and Johnny arrived a minute after, so we were spared having to do any sort of small-talk.

“Alright.” I said as I stood up. This didn’t feel like the sort of conversation that should be had sitting down. I flicked a setting on with my augs and a map of the city sprung to life on the tabletop, a topographic map that outlined the extent of the hive beneath Burlington. “This is what we’re dealing with,” I said.

“Those don’t look like sewer tunnels,” Sprout said.

“No. It looks like the hive’s been avoiding those, as well as any maintenance tunnels. Their passage pokes in, sometimes, but then they tend to divert away,” I said. I probably sounded a lot more professional than I am. “My guess is that the hive’s trying to be stealthy, which... well, it’s worked so far.”

“So, we go down and kick their asses?” Johnny asked. He grinned and shifted in such a way that his chest was puffed out even more and the muscles of his arms bulged. “I got to live up to my new name.”

“New name?” I asked. This was a distraction, but I couldn’t help but be curious.

His grin turned smug. “Babe Gomorrah gave it to me. I’m now known as Arm-a-Geddon. Oh yeah! Check out my nukes!”

I looked to Gomorrah, who seemed entirely to blame for all of this, but all she did was shake her head minutely as if to deny any involvement.

“Congratulations, Johnny... or, Arm a Geddon. I’m sure you’ll live up to the name. We’re going to have to cut the celebrations short for a minute because we’re all going to die unless we do something about this.” I pointed to the hologram.

“Number of enemies?” General Wilkinson asked.

“Too damned many,” I said. The hologram blinked as it refreshed, and the tunnels were all a couple of metres longer. My cat drones were still pushing through. From the looks of it, the majority of the hive was concentrated on the water-side of the city, sandwiched between Downtown and the coast.

... Was it a coast if the coast was along a lake and not the ocean? I had no idea, and I didn’t care enough to look it up.

“We still haven’t discovered the size of the hive, but what we do know is that there are enough aliens waiting down there to overwhelm our shitty defences ten times over. So, we need two things. First, to kill off the hive. I have a plan for that. Second, to defend the city better, which I also have a plan for, but my plan’s kinda shit.”

“Let’s go over the defences first,” Gomorrah said. “It’s more pressing, right?”

I nodded. “Probably, yeah. Right now we basically have a very thin barrier of volunteers and under-equipped militia between most of Downtown and a whole lot of very mean aliens that’ll be coming out from... well, everywhere.” I pointed to a few spots where the hive basically ran under Downtown.

“Our defences are already penetrated, then,” the General said.

“Basically. We need to clog up these holes, then make sure that the main defences can actually hold up. My main plan is simple enough. Pump the hive full of these little drone-delivered nano-machines. They’ll all start eating at the same time.”

“Killing the entire hive all at once?” Gomorrah asked.

“Bingo. But I asked Myalis, and even the fastest-acting ones take a few minutes. And they’re disproportionately expensive. We’ll be mixing fast-acting payloads with much cheaper, slower-to-eat ones that we can spread around some more. Hopefully, we hit all of the hives. When they come out for revenge, they’ll be half dead already, even if they don’t know it.”

“That’s the whole plan?” Gomorrah asked.

“I’d love to hear better ideas. And I’m not being sarcastic or anything. Better ideas would be fantastic,” I said. No one volunteered anything for a bit.

“So... I can’t just walk in and punch everything dead?” Arm-a-Geddon asked. He sounded a bit disappointed.

I snorted. “I wish you could, but that’d wake the whole thing up. There are some double-digit models down there. Tens and up. We’re going to be dealing with some big nasties soon. General, how quickly can you mobilise the entire militia?”

“You mean pull people off of their relaxation time?” he asked. “I can have everyone in tip-top within the hour. It’ll mean waking a lot of the night-shift people up though.”

“Give them some coffee,” I suggested. “Gomorrah, I bet you have a few points left over, think you can help me arm everyone up?”

“Sure. you’re going to do the same?”

“I’m going to buy a heap of cat drones as a mobile force, then spend the rest on turrets and better guns. Hummingbirds cost very little and the civvies can use those no problem.”

“Hummingbirds?” Manic asked.

I nodded. “Little smart-pistols. No aiming required and they’ll take out a weaker alien without too much fuss. We can set up mines and more creative explosives along the smaller routes leading into Downtown. We might want to pull people out of the towers on the outer edges though, they’ll be hit by any area-of-effect stuff.”

“What about River Heights?” Baker asked. I’d kinda forgotten she was there.

I considered what to say for a moment. “Well, if River Heights wants to use the protection afforded by Downtown, they have just under an hour to move. Things are going to get very messy, very soon.”

We all had a lot of work ahead of us, and not much time to do it in.

Maybe I should have just called in the orders instead of pulling everyone into another meeting... a lesson for next time, I supposed.

***