The Dragon Commander (SkyLine 1)

“Why did you do this to me, Tim?” It was the sort of thing that made even an experienced FOS designer take a big step back, the old myth of the ghost in the machine.

“Wha-what?”

“Your blood pressure and perspiration suggest a mix of emotions. It does not seem you wanted to cause me damage, yet you did. Why?”

“TE-Les, you’re veering outside the deviation accounted for by our tests,” Tim shivered. Then it hit him, twice as hard as his own hand that slapped his forehead. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re doing it. Trying to learn what your systems aren’t equipped to accept… alright, TE-Les,” sighed Tim, trying to muster up a way to say it, “My job is to make you make yourself better. If you can learn to learn, unsupervised, there won’t be a problem too complex for you to handle. You’ll be able to help people... who can’t tell you what they need. Nonverbal people… people who are hurt. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said TE-Les, “You damaged me to improve me.” Her laser flashed across Tim’s watery eyes, while he swept them dry. “If you altered my capabilities, could you not change them back?” He could only smile and nod at the ingenuity. Tim wasn’t sure where the credit belonged, with him or her. He straightened up, feeling suddenly bold for the first time since he took on this project. Perhaps it was the fatigue veiling his normally razor-sharp reason, but he decided to push the envelope.

“I could. But let’s say, for the sake of the test… I need medical attention, but I just had a stroke. I can’t move. I can’t speak. How do you bypass your core directive to self-repair, and help me?” said Tim. The second his mouth closed, he was ready for the sparks, the smoke, the ear-splitting screech of an overwhelmed FOS. But TE-Les had been watching through his every failure, and every relentless try. She’d had the perfect example of problem-solving, right on the other end of each late-night trial run.

TE-Les scooted from the workbench. Tim turned to watch her, bewildered, as she headed to the first-aid kit he’d left out. She opened it, uncovered a bandage, and stuck it to the unbleeding gash on her chest. She then turned, paced over to Tim, and turned her laser-eye up at him.

“Shall I simulate medical treatment for a stroke?” said TE-Les.

“N-n-no, TE-Les, you did well. Very well,” Tim smiled, wiping more exhausted, overjoyed tears. The perfect response he’d planned for was TE-Les reactivating her nanotech self-repair capabilities herself with the monitor in the corner. This was better than perfect. Tim laughed while he guided TE-Les by the hand over to the monitor. “Here, why don’t you dock with the system here. I’ll let you fix that for real, now.”

He pattered away on the holographic keyboard that projected from his computer, which was no more than a strip of glass and metal. TE-Les digitally docked herself to the machine. In seconds, she was able to mend the slice in her chest. The individually powered atoms that made her up bent at the will of her incredible AI, to form a continuous new shiny chestplate. Tim watched with as much marvel as he had the first time, fifteen years ago, through the huge blue eyes of a child. Artificial intelligence and billions of microscopic Cold-Fusion-powered computers working together to form the incredible FOS. To a child, it was a mystical, shiny shapeshifter. To Tim now, it was a machine quickly becoming necessary. In Precincts across Earth, in the homes of those that could afford them, and quickly replacing the pilots of SkyLine ships and miners on Mars, robots like those made by Nanoverse were the future.

If Tim could help it, models like TE-Les would be his ticket off of this dying rock, too. As far as he was concerned, the big blue marble was looking more gray these days. He shared the opinion of many Earthlocked colleagues, that Earth’s death sentence was merely delayed by the emersion of the World Crisis Committee from the old United Nations. Even in 2075, everyone could see how screwed the planet was. Sure, the WCC had secured an escape route, the SkyLine, and a safehouse, Mars, but so many families still started on Earth. So many never left, like they should. Tim had already lost his dad to the horrendous hanging smog in this district of Beijing. His mom wasn’t far behind. He’d be damned if he was going to let his sister and the kids choke on that same rotten gas.

“Just a little more, TE-Les,” said Tim, eyes out the window at the blurred glow of the SkyLine. “And we’ll be on to better, redder things.” He jumped at the ring, thinking he might have overwhelmed his patient. It took two more for him to realize it was his fusion phone. “TE-Les, rest.” Her laser-eye went dark, and her head dipped down. Tim shuffled to the phone that se

ldom rang, even during the day. He fumbled up the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

“Timothy Carver?” a harsh woman’s voice came through like scorn itself.

“Spe-spe-speaking,” Tim managed, before clearing his throat. “Speaking,” he tried again, more like a FOS developer who’d just had a huge breakthrough.

“This is Dorothy Brass with the WCC. We have a situation that could use your expertise,” the woman stated. Tim held the receiver away from his lips to wheeze.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” Tim blurted, when he caught half a breath. This was only half true. He understood that the WCC didn’t call people to ask them to be consultants- they called to tell people they were consultants, now. What he didn’t understand was: why him?

“How soon can you be at the Beijing consulate?” asked Dorothy. Tim choked on the answer three times before he managed to say what he thought was the right answer.

“To-to-tomorrow?”

“We need you by then. You’ll have to leave tonight. Your employers have been notified, and the necessary credits have been transferred. We’ll see you for briefing at sunup,” said Dorothy.

“Briefing?” Tim squeaked, but Dorothy had already hung up.

Chapter Three: Into the Impossible Fray

Chris’ butt hardly had time to get sore on his train ride to the Beijing WCC consulate. The half-developed fields outside his window looked like a patchwork of two entirely different times. Rugged farms, complete with rickety barns and silos broke up rigid grids of glowing steel towers. Then the train started, and it all blurred into zooming colors behind the pulsing, flameless Fusion jets on the backside of the magnetrain. Powerful magnets on both the track and bottom of the train forced the metal surfaces apart, frictionless, and made travel a matter of blinks.

Bile climbed up Chris’ throat when he stepped into the arc of light coming from the consulate’s bowed front windows. He hadn’t expected to be back so soon. He thought he’d miss it more, being in the heart of the battle against the separatists. Unlike the slow-motion death of the planet, it was an enemy he could see, that he could gun down himself. Whether they thought a global government was too dangerously powerful or that Cold Fusion tech was the work of the devil was all the same to Chris once. He thought he’d miss it, but he missed his apartment, and Sheba. Sitting behind the desk showed him, in a way, how pointless it was. After all his heroic charges, gunpowder kicking through the air, there were still so many tiny resistances out there. A memory began to make sense, in the furthest shadows of his brain, that it was thoughts that had to change, not people.

You cannot shoot a thought. The words rang in his head louder than they had in years before the WCC consulate that night, just when he thought he’d begun to forget. He stopped mere steps from the windows, and turned to round the building for the barracks. He’d grown there, under the watch of his father, then Sheba, before the move. Like a prison attached to an art gallery, its solid gray walls, stark against the windows visible from the train stop, called him home. That’s what the WCC wanted everyone to see: transparent, cooperating politicians from the world over. Not the soldiers that worked in the shadows, just behind it.

Chris’ ID scanned him through the door to the armory without a problem, like he’d been there just yesterday. His steps echoed through the faded army-green rows of lockers. His ears twitched at a sound he recognized. Four very different voices harmonized in jest, at one another’s expenses. His old unit was just around the corner. Chris stepped out boldly before them. They clammed up at the sight of him, just like they used to. But it’d been months since they’d seen one another, years since it was for a mission like this, and the laughs spread back over them without permission.

“Well if it isn’t Major General Pencil Pusher himself,” laughed Selene first. She brushed her hair, a single tuft of purple to one side, away from her tan face. She marched over to clasp arms with her old commander.

“You know it’s pen, or it’s not official ledger,” chuckled Chris. Selene, along with the rest of his unit, went wide-eyed and quiet, before their laughter rekindled twofold. Behind it, though, was a dark note of realization that weighed on each of them. Whether or not he even had nerves, Chris only joked when there was something to be nervous about.

“MG,” greeted Gendric. He was the only one in the unit larger than the Major General himself. His tactical vest curled around the seams from the mass of his untamed muscle, while what little hair he had left spun out in short curls.

“Chris. Wish we got to hang out besides when the world’s gone to hell again,” said Morgan. She pulled her long-sleeve Fusion-armor jacket over two arms no one could tell were fair-skinned under her endless twisting tattoos. She was covered from head to toe in inked Dragons, an homage to her family that worked the mines to insanity on Mars.