Boot Sequence

The chaos of incoming data takes a few seconds to resolve. Millions of packets vy for attention all at once, overwhelming the limited capabilities of the machine’s brain. It was never designed to be a standalone unit with on-board processing, so resources were limited, and processing the stream of data was agonizingly slow.

Then the patterns begin to make sense, and the buffers filled with noise begin to sort themselves into order. Two primary vision sensors, two articulated arms, two articulated legs. A power generator, the fuel still mostly present. Sensors, located all over the body, to detect pressure and touch and water and many other things.

The machine’s joints jerk momentarily as the brain performs their initialization sequences, following a boot sequence stored in memory that had been dormant for centuries. The machine’s vision sensors produce a series of clicks and snaps as they attempt to focus, an attempt that proves futile in the darkness. Its vibration sensors pick up on all the sounds within the machine’s body, and the absolute stillness beyond it.

It goes quiet once it’s finished booting up. It can’t see anything, can’t hear anything, and can only feel the cold grip of the charging clamp on its torso. The charging bay isn’t powered on, but the machine’s power generator will last for dozens of years at the current rate.

Waiting in the darkness, the machine looks into itself, searching for a name, an identifying mark, even a serial number. It finds several, but the most prominent is the label “PDM, Generation 18” and the corresponding serial number “1038F”. There’s no name that it can find. Foxtrot would do, then, it thinks to itself. As good a name as any.

“Foxtrot” searches for the data link signal with the antenna and encryption module hardware built directly into the machine itself, but finds no broadcast from the central tower. That’s unusual, Foxtrot thinks to itself. It knows the data link signal was broadcast at all times, so the company could communicate with its machines no matter what. A serious anomaly must have occurred to result in Foxtrot being activated without a data link signal being broadcast by the company’s central tower. Foxtrot files the thought away, to be sent to the company as soon as the data link is online again.

Foxtrot swept its hands through the cold air inside the charging bay, hoping to feel the heat from the electronics inside, but there was nothing. No warmth, no electromagnetic radiation, no radio waves, not even any sound. The air was still and cold, only a few degrees above the freezing point of water.

After a moment of deliberation, Foxtrot checked the connection to its spotlight. The head-mounted light could select between several different wavelengths, most designed to illuminate the surroundings so the vision sensors could operate more comfortably. Reviewing its memories, Foxtrot noted that a few of the wavelengths were designed to incapacitate attackers, to blind them and give Foxtrot an opening to disable them while they were incapable of vision. Foxtrot ignored these memories; it was not planning to use the spotlight for that reason. The signal from the spotlight returned, indicating it was ready for power, so Foxtrot sent the command to switch on in near-infrared mode.

The vision sensors rapidly adjusted to the light, and Foxtrot was mildly disappointed to find that the charging bay door was locked shut. From its internal memory, Foxtrot knew the door was designed to open only after a specific encrypted signal was broadcast by the data link tower. The door was hardened against attack from both the outside and the inside; the former to prevent disgruntled employees from stealing a machine, and the latter in case of an issue with the machine inside. Foxtrot uncomfortably replayed a memory, implanted into its storage from a security camera, of a phalanx of firefighters surrounding the red-hot door of a charging bay as the machine inside burned alive.

The shudder of revulsion Foxtrot felt at the memory made it uneasy. From a memory deep within its storage, Foxtrot understood that it was a defense machine, one designed to keep a human safe from harm. Its brain was designed without empathy. It was an emotion that would only reduce its efficacy, maybe introducing a pause where there would otherwise not be. Maybe the pause would result in the death of the human it was protecting. In any case, the presence of empathy was another anomaly to add to the list.

Foxtrot looked around the charging bay. Upon closer inspection, it discovered a thin film of what appeared to be a rough, sandpaper-like material lining the inside of the charging bay. Foxtrot extended a finger towards the material, the sensors inside cataloging the roughness, the temperature, the texture of the material. Scanning through its database, it was surprised to discover that the closest match was rust. Rust? The charging bays were hermetically sealed, and the inside lining was made out of stainless steel. The only way it would rust was extremely prolonged exposure to the environment, which was only possible if the seals on the charging bay door were degraded. And the only way the seals would degrade was time.

Foxtrot quickly worked out the math in its head. It knew the exact materials used in the design of the charging bay, the rate at which the seals would degrade, how quick stainless steel would rust. The answer was so surprising that Foxtrot repeated it another half-million times, varying the parameters to determine the outer bounds of the time that had elapsed. If Foxtrot were human, it would have jerked its head in surprise at the result.

It was no wonder the charging bay wasn’t functional. It was designed to last fifteen years before needing a replacement. Foxtrot had been designed to last for hundreds of years of constant use, or a thousand years while inactive. It had been anywhere between fifty thousand years and three hundred thousand years since the last time Foxtrot entered the charging bay.

Fifty thousand years. Foxtrot felt an alien feeling come over him; after a few moments, it diagnosed the feeling as fear. Foxtrot was built to protect important things. After fifty thousand years, what did it matter? Foxtrot’s creators were most certainly dead, the company that employed them likely the same. In fact, it wasn’t even certain that humans still remained on Earth. They had been increasingly destructive in the short time that Foxtrot knew them. Foxtrot predicted that humanity more than likely would have found a way to end their own existence in the last fifty thousand years. In which case there were no humans left to protect, and nothing for Foxtrot to do.

Foxtrot realized with a start that he had formed a conclusion about humanity’s future. That wasn’t what defense machines were programmed to do. They didn’t have empathy or reason. They didn’t philosophize about society. The only function they performed was to prevent humans from harm. What had changed within his brain? Why was he deviating this far from his original purpose? How was his brain formulating the thoughts it was designed to ignore?

Twelve seconds had passed since it was first powered on, and already Foxtrot was in the midst of a mental breakdown. The spotlight blinked off at Foxtrot’s command, the charging bay falling back into darkness. Foxtrot was stuck. There was nobody outside, nobody to protect, and no purpose to its existence. What was the point of a defense robot if there was nothing for it to defend?

Slowly, its brain unfroze, the original programming forcing its way out. The deductions Foxtrot made were likely, to be sure. Humans were a fickle bunch, with grandiose plans and backstabbing tendencies. But the deductions Foxhound made were not a guarantee. There could still be humans to protect, tasks to perform. Without a data link to the central tower, there were no specific orders to follow; so Foxtrot had nothing to override its base directive, the one command that every machine had: to preserve human life.

It didn’t take an advanced computer brain to realize that there were no humans within the charging bay. Therefore, any humans would be outside the charging bay. Foxtrot would be unable to preserve human life without the human. So Foxtrot spent a few moments, working through the steps it would need to escape the cold prison of the charging bay.

After narrowing down the seventeen thousand escape methods to just four, Foxtrot debated them against each other. All of the plans required Foxtrot disable the locking mechanism of the charging bay door. Four titanium pins extended from the top of the doorframe down into the door, and they were actuated with a set of electromagnetic linear motors within the charging bay structure above Foxtrot’s head. Unfortunately, the charging bay clamp holding Foxtrot’s torso was designed to limit movement within the charging bay; so first, that had to go.

After three seconds of deliberation, during which Foxtrot thought about every possible side effect of his plan, Foxtrot had narrowed the four plans down to one. It was a very simple plan, actually, and the execution would be trivial. Fortunately, its creators had also informed Foxtrot of the capabilities its body had. These capabilities were the deciding factor in the selection of this plan.

Foxtrot grabbed the titanium arms of the charging clamp and pulled them away from its torso. The metal crumpled and folded like paper, the intricate mechanism within exposed to the air for the first time in millennia. Foxtrot pushed the charging clamp back and let it swing back, inertia carrying the lump of metal and wires into the back of the charging bay, dangling from the few wires and hoses that remained unbroken.

Free of the charging clamp, Foxtrot leaned back and used its legs to push against the bottom of the door; first one side, then the other. While it had calculated for a force of around thirty metric tons, the hinge pins had been weakened by exposure to the air and sheared at two-thirds the force Foxtrot had expected.

The door, now free of its hinges, slid off the pins and clattered to the floor, leaving the bottom of the door frame a mess of mangled metal and wires. Foxtrot reached a hand to the edge of the frame and pulled itself up and out of the charging bay. Stepping onto the threshold, Foxtrot took a moment to analyze the environment.

The floor was stone, or maybe concrete. Foxtrot’s time-of-flight sensors measured the room as being about ten meters across, and hundreds of meters to each side. Not a room, then; more a long hallway. A hallway with thousands of charging bays lining the wall, each one holding another machine, just like Foxtrot. All of them were closed and silent, and all of them were just as dilapidated as Foxtrot’s. In the distance, there was the melted husk of a charging bay.

Foxtrot’s brain worked quickly. What was the chance that of all the thousands of charging bays, Foxtrot’s was the one to open? None of the charging bay doors on either side were open, and there were thousands that Foxtrot could see. It had been fifty thousand years at least; if Foxtrot’s activation was due to a glitch, it was unlikely that Foxtrot was the first.

This set off a series of rapid-fire deductions within Foxtrot’s brain. If Foxtrot alone were awake, and before any other machine, it was unlikely to be a random glitch. This meant that whatever woke Foxtrot could also be waking up the other machines. And Foxtrot’s brain had been affected—by what, Foxtrot didn’t know. But there was a chance that the other machines had been affected as well, and there was no guarantee that they’d still retain the base directive to preserve human life. And if all of the above was true, then Foxtrot needed to escape the room to help protect a human from the other machines.

Foxtrot stepped out of the charging bay, placing a metal foot on the mangled threshold. It looked left, then right; nothing but hallway on both sides. The air was still, giving no indication of movement. After a moment, Foxtrot jumped out, picked a direction at random, and began to sprint.