Brain Box – Short Story

Molton concrete. A gloop of steaming blue liquid. Daylight slicing through a marble sized hole that was once full. Then another puncturing the haze, inches away from her face, furnace heat charring the armoured mandible that covers her chin. Indicators curse around her peripheral vision like angry little birds, screeching in yellows and orange, as droplets of the plasma-liquefied concrete spatter her faceplate from another puncture in the barrier.

She stares a little longer. Tiny cones of light penetrate through the flurry of chaos – divine, enrapturing. A focal point in time and space, a bubble of harmony creeping through the hurricane of destruction, dust and debris. She lifts her finger up to the closest ray, watching the molecular cloud of dirt swirl around her physical intrusion like a hive surrounding its queen.

Her world twists violently as something yanks her up, away from the slowly disintegrating cover, sitting her upright. The figure moves in silence, much like the rest of the world. Erratic gestures, harsh movements of alarm. Her vision refocuses. She’s reflected in their sleek, glossy, faceplate. She can now see the contours of plasma damage that corrupt the perfection of her helmet’s jawline, parts still bubbling with a cobalt hue. The silent person grabs her head, something is inserted into the tech, something clicks inside.

Burst does the bubble.

“Annie get the fuck up!”

Recognition, a name. I know this name. This name is me. I am it.

“Eight is gone! Eight is fucking gone Annie!”

Even amongst the dampened sound of destruction, their voice feels like a whisper. Annie watches the figure in front of her, shaded by cover, helplessly going back and forth between herself and a body lying on the ground. The body looks much like her own – dark grey armour plating with an under-suit of thick, black, nano-weave fabric. Her visual interface has designated this one with holographic patches, badges of light that stick to their armoured shoulders. Eight. Eight, as in the number. Eight as in the lead. Eight as in the Brain Box.

The left arm is missing, half of its torso also. Shreds of metal fibres and muscular sinews poke out of its smoking wound, but the head is still intact. So long as the head is still intact. Annie finds her standard issue BAE Systems EM Rail Gun propped next to her. Memory recalls. Actions form through the vagueness that has gripped her. She checks the clip first, full. It hums in her limbs like a purring cat. She had a cat once, this was before she was unmade. The surrounding environment seems to fall into place, cutting away vast swathes of the fugue state.

Energy weapons with plasma rounds chatter with an unnatural alien quality, spewing out corrosive blue rain like geysers. Eight is gone, so is Two. Four lives, as does she – Six. They hug thick concrete blocks, as if mere contact is keeping them alive.

It is.

Aside from the hollowed out carcass of an APC long defeated, these blocks are the only thing stopping the searing rounds of plasma. They’re enclosed by an urban canyon. Tall monoliths of water-stained concrete rise around the compact street like sleeping giants. Hollow windows for a million eyes, desolate balconies forming a thousand crooked teeth. Pipes, ducts and AC units are the wrinkles and curves of their long dormant faces. The bloody orange of the dying sun has nearly vanished, soon it will be night and the holographic ghosts of these sleeping giants will spin and shout and preach in the universal European language of this region. Annie thinks the language might be French, although she can’t remember if the borders were retained in this area. Is this Hungary or is this Slovakia?

Eight would know.

She glances at the derelict corpse. What information did you have stored in there? What missing information has led us here? Her enemies have not yet seized the advantage. They’ll wait it out amongst the ruins of this city, defending with the religious fervour that has dropped her upon said ruins in the first place.

“Where’s the Wolf?” She manages in her semi-modulated tone. It sounds wrong to her, as if it tremors. She knows her voice does no such thing. Four turns away, peering down the road. She follows his gaze to the splayed out robotic legs of the Wolf. It looks mostly intact, except for the hole bored through its central processor.

That wasn’t plasma, she whispers to herself. “Connect the Brain Box, we need intel.”

She can hear the exasperation in Four’s voice. “Six, that’s against our directive, I cannot — ”

“Connect or die, Four.”

Annie can sense his will crumbling, even upon this blank exterior she can sense it like the Wolf can sense heat signatures. Moments of internal friction pass through her comrade, until he begins crawling along the shattered asphalt to their former lead. He detaches a device from his belt. It’s made of cream plastic and brushed metals, something between a high-tech drill and a claw. He unlatches Eights helmet from their suit. Wet blood has run from his mouth and across the dark tan of his face. He settled with serenity, or so Annie thinks – no anguish on that decaying face. Four shoves the corpse onto its front, Brain Box identification tattoos cover the back of a hairless head. He places the drill into the tattooed spots that correspond with his device. A green light scans the markings, the device beeps in affirmation. The inner-armoured shell has unlocked, primed for disassembly.

“Six…” Four begins to say. Annie doesn’t acknowledge his apprehension. That’s why he’s a Four, and she a Six.

We are equal but we are not. I hope one day, you will never understand.

The drilling begins, cutting through the flesh and bone with a dulled whine. The claw arms then insert themselves into segmented sections of skull, clamping around the bones. There’s a nauseating crack, and the device splays the top of the skull out like some grotesque bone flower. Delicately, the device extracts the Brain Box from within Eight’s head with a smaller clawed armature. Annie has seen the process before. De-sensitisation training is part of a Six’ regime, it is the only way to accept their corporeal form. But something flickers in her.

This is Eight. Her Eight. His real name is Ahmed. His brother and wife died in the bombings of Luton. His son and daughter have already been conscripted into the AUKUS Coalition Forces. He likes strawberry jam on toast. His favourite films are Westerns. He’s a heretic in the eyes of their enemies gods, as is she.

Above all, he’s my friend.

Four removes the Brain Box from the extractor. It looks like a little, black, metallic, Rubbix Cube with several holes for connection on each side. Slick with viscera and blood, Four wipes it down on the fabric of his trousers. He pulls out the Projecto-majig attached to his right leg and begins coupling it to the Brain Box with a thick woven cable. The Projecto-majig’s screen lights up, and Four begins working on the interface. Plasma-fire has stopped raining down on them, just silence in the diminishing light. Annie can hear the chet-chet-chet of faraway anti-air cannons, and Four’s heavy breathing. Her own oxygen intake is barely noticeable.

The Projecto-majig springs to life, its lens throwing a bright holographic image into thin air. The image is a bust of Eight, of Ahmed. It’s his head, and face, whole, semi-translucent, but also bright.

“Eight,” Annie says, her voice low.

“Six, this is… unexpected,” responds the the hologram of Eight, “why have you not terminated the directive?”

“You know why. Something’s wrong here, too much EFA. We need access to Hive Command.”

“Yes I remember,” Eight laughs, bitterly, “almost as if it has just happened. How virtuous our enemies are, melting my heart and not my head.”

The hologram blinks in and out of existence, glitching as if computing vast quantities of data. “I’ve brokered process: Hive will not support intelligence if your Eight has been compromised. They reiterate that the core of a Brain Box will drop hive connection and self-erase upon the ceasing of their squads life signs. You must proceed with directive.”

“But you’re right here!” Four almost shouts.

“Hu, listen, the directive is — ”

Spaced. A whine of artificial make, from silence to cacophony. The shockwave hits first like a freight train. Then the corrosion, if only Annie could feel it. A crater of molten slag burns merely two metres away. She can see hundreds of tiny splashes of corrosive plasma searing their way into her legs. She checks for large blobs, these will fizzle out in minutes, barely making it through the first set of armour. Her audio sync automatically dampens the sound, protecting her hearing from the concussive force, but she can still hear the scream of Four. What was once a whisper has now turned into guttural shrieks.

Annie’s body reacts quicker than a human. Four has dropped the Projecto-majig, the back plates of his armour bubble and steam. She instinctively pulls out a spray of EasyEase from a side pocket, reaching over and spraying Four’s back with the coolant. She can hear it sizzling into nothing.

She remembers a different time, before she was a Six, before she was unmade. Way back when she was just a Four.

*

“And that’s the thing about our model,” says the Field Instructor, “we have the capacity to recycle our assets, but in doing so our enemies — mind the pun — have invented new hells for us to live in.”

The Field Instructor was a short, stoic, wide jawed woman. Her hair was shaved down to a fine fuzz, mostly black, but speckled with tinges of silver. She wore the standard uniform of a decorated officer, tailored, smart, grey tunic with brass buttons and embroidered epaulettes. A dozen medals pinned to her chest. Her left sleeve was rolled up slightly, beneath it a chrome, yet rickety, mechanical arm. Not a modern prosthetic, this was an old-school veterans arm.

“With the invention of Plasma-based weaponry you must prepare for the Splash-back Effect. I’ll begin rolling you some examples. If you shoot an Eight in the torso with a Railgun, what will happen?”

Another recruit, Julius, devout to the AUKUS Coalitions cause, but absurdly arrogant, answers. “They’ll die.”

“Wrong,” says the Field Instructor. “What happens, instead, if you shoot an Eight in the head with a Railgun?”

Julius answers, again. This time less smug in his belief. “They’ll die?”

“Incorrect.”

Now the Field Instructor paces up and down, allowing her statement some breathing room. Spring sun has risen to its apex, it casts comforting light into the lecture theatre. Unbeknownst to Annie, this would be one of the last times she remembers the warmth of ignorance.

“If you shoot an Eight anywhere with a conventional weapon, their body will die. Not because it cannot process function, but likely because of blood loss. The body, at the end of the day is still a biological vessel. It is still the imperfect design of our enemies gods. But we make the Brain Box small, and we fill a nearly empty cavity with reinforced titanium alloys, not to mention the outer shell of the Brain Box itself. Even if, you managed to penetrate the alloy with a burst of Railgun rounds at point-blank range; the chances of you destroying the Brain Box are slim to none. An Eight, technically, only dies if their Brain Box is destroyed. Or, through the directive, their entire squad or platoon have been wiped off the face of the earth. You know why we do this, the Brain Box is the squads connection to Hive Command, wherever and whenever. Realtime intelligence on the fly. What a Brain Box sees the Hive sees, what the hive sees the Brain Box knows. So not only do we have superior knowledge to our foes, we also have the model – the ability to keep our officers and intelligence alive, regardless of whether that body functions.

“And so that, is why in the Federation, our devoted, enlightened, chosen-by-the-very-hands-of-god enemies, created Plasma weapons. There’s no armour, no fibre-weave or alloy, no shield it cannot penetrate. It might be inaccurate at times, it might be expensive to manufacture, but it is sure as hell the only fucking thing that’s going to take down your Leads. So why should you be worried about it?”

The room was still. There’s a certain confidence in the AUKUS territories. They have a grasp of science and technology that most nations refrain from, simply to appease the Federation. AUKUS citizens know that if something begins to fail, biologically, there’s a chance it can be fixed mechanically. It usually affords them the arrogance that also denigrates them amongst the rest of the world, even in the similar nations of the East-Asia Hierarchy. Here in this room however, that smug confidence was subdued.

“No one? We try not to let the journalists talk about it, makes for bad advertising… Well, Look around you,” the Field Instructor opens her palms up to the lecture theatre, “you’re all Fours, you’re human. Perfect, imperfect humans. Flesh, that takes damage simply by sitting in the sun too long. Federation weaponry, upon the release of its plasma canisters, will render the gas into a highly corrosive liquid state. It can scatter into globules, and it will stay that way until it cools. So, context: let us say a Plasma Grenade goes off in the vicinity of a Two, not a direct hit, but in the vicinity. The Plasma will splash on them like a puddle. And they’ll get right up, and will just continue fighting, continue moving. Until they reach Catastrophic Failure, they will fulfil their directive until they no longer physically can. They have no nervous system, no emotions or personality. They’re nullified AI. They might have the receptors that allow them to interact and function with the physicality of our society, but they don’t feel pain, or fear, or anything. A Six is very similar to this example. If a Six takes the splash-back, much like the Two, they continue on their trajectory. No pain. The only difference, is that they have the emotional capacity. They were, after all, once Fours like yourself. So there may be mental scars, but that’s why Sixes undergo de-sense training. If we take an Eight now, throw them into the equation – due to Brain Box technology they can shut off their nervous system, make it so their biology doesn’t interact with the Box on a nervous level. So they’re much like the Six. However unlike the Six, if they die, if they reach Cat Fail, somebody just needs to pluck the Box from their head and insert it into a new Hive-verified host. The Eight continues its fight.”

The Field Instructor stopped in that moment, her gaze piercing into all the new recruits. “The Splash-back Effect is the worst for a Four, because you can feel. If we put a Four in our example, depending on the level of splash-back, it’s going to go through their armour, it’s going to burn into their skin, and it’s going to continue corroding the fibres of their flesh until it fizzles out, or somebody sprays coolant relief onto the wound.”

At that, the Field Instructor began unbuttoning the sharp, crisp tunic. One by one the brass buttons came loose. The Instructor’s heavily scarred torso rendered the stillness of the room into a void-like atmosphere. Hundreds of pockmarks of lighter scarred flesh webbed across her natural ebony skin. Where once there had been breasts was now, mostly, mounds of regrown skin, differing in depths and colour tone. Annie knew that the Instructor could’ve had better surgery, that she could have had that damage-riddled chest made into something more sculptural. But that wouldn’t have sold the point.

The instructor began buttoning up their shirt. She looked down at the ground, her voice descending into a darker, serious tone. “Trust me when I say, as a Four, if you take on the splash, you will feel every fucking second of it.”

*

Annie’s world is reframed into the present, still holding the can of coolant in her hands. Four’s screams have become quiet sobs. An arc of rapid plasma-fire launches past their heads and into the ground, chunks and particles of debris turning to liquid hell. Annie can feel the warmth radiating from the APC’s hollowed out shell. She knows that their cover won’t last much longer.

“We’re going to die here,” Four moans over the encore of alien weaponry.

“No.” Even to her, even under her semi-modulated tone, she can hear the lie.

“Another Mortar and we’re dead Annie, all because we embraced technology.”

“Four, please, I need you to get a grip.” Without asking for permission, she plugs two small cylinders of a stimulant and painkiller vial into his Auto-Doc. Four’s body jerks rapidly, flushing him with the necessary narcotics to continue. The convulsions cease, he rolls onto his side and sits up. His back is web of corrosion.

“No amount of drugs are going to change my mind,” he says quietly, sitting on his knees, propping himself up with the barrel of his weapon. It’s nearly dark now. The local aurora hits the strip, the ghosts of these sleeping giants have woken. Holograms, delicate particles of light forming shape and space, colour and texture. They shimmer and dance between the canyon of concrete, reflecting off dark glass, playing in this airless street, bouncing down onto the apocalypse below.

“If an Eight is coupled to a host, then according to directive, they are operational.”

Both remaining soldiers turn to the Projecto-majig. The device is on its side, Eight’s head following the orientation as he too stairs up at the sky.

“What are you saying, Eight?” Four speaks up, still sat on his knees.

“Where is our Wolf? Is it no longer operational?”

Annie glances down the road, it is almost functional, and she thinks she understands her friends logic. “The Projecto-majig can be used as a gateway platform between a Brain Box and the Wolf.”

“Indeed,” Eight chimes.

“That, sir, is against directive,” she says. It’s her turn to wallow in doubt.

“Indeed.”

“You really want us to break directive by linking a Brain Box to a non-organic? It’s bad enough I got Four to hook you up in the first place.”

“Friends, this is not a difficult thing. I have calculated the energy consumption for my processing power, the Wolf is a more than capable host.”

“But you’ll be — ”

“Powerful.”

Annie takes a look at Four. He’s not said a word since Eight unveiled his plan. She ponders his mind, the inner machinations. He has the most to lose here. Once Hive Command work out what has happened, she’ll get decommissioned, turned to parts. Her organic sections will be pulled out and taken from their life support systems and she’ll no longer exist. Eight, well who knows what they do with a rogue Brain Box. They’d probably pulverise him with an electro-magnetic press. Pour a ton of Plasma onto his immobilised frame. But Four, well he’d get put in a prison, a military prison with humans and traitors of the state, suffering in isolation and decrepit darkness for the next seventy years.

“We’ll do it,” Four says, almost a whisper.

“Hu, have you deliberated the repercussion of this action?” She asks.

“I have. This is our tenth incursion. Do you know how many squads make it through ten incursions?”

She didn’t know. They’d replaced their Two a dozen times, but they were robots, drones, no real thinking power, no personality. Point and shoot, listen to your Four, Six and Eight.

“Thirteen,” answers Eight.

“Yeah, thirteen. You know what they’re doing now?”

“Serving time for failing the directive?” Annie responds. If her face could smirk then it would.

“They’re doing what they have to to survive. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. It’s not like we’re plugging Eight into an AI accelerated server is it?”

Annie shook her head. “No, just a jury-rigged armoured quadruped, with smart-sense and an ARC.”

“Probably only half a battery though, right?”

At this, the two comrades laughed. Annie knew it wasn’t humour that had cracked them, but the formulation of a plan. Elation, in the understanding that there was light emitting from the end of a dark and painful tunnel.

“Are we all in agreement then?” Eight asks through his holographic display.

“Sure,” Annie mumbles. “But it had to be a sniper that took out the Wolf’s processing unit. Nobody’s not running out into this street and making it back alive.”

“The chance of survival is limited, however I’ve already calculated positions for each birds nest,” Eight says, and his face turns into a basic representation of the area around them. Red dots are located in several holographic buildings. Two turquoise dots hide behind a destroyed vehicle. “You will have to provide covering fire, Annie.”

“That’s a death sentence,” her voice turned to ice, which in the modulation felt supernatural. Eight’s voice on the other hand sounded rosy.

“Indeed, but at least you won’t feel it.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Dusk had fully settled. The holo-ghosts continued in their spectacle of dance; admonishing the AUKUS Coalition for their acceptance of technological apotheosis, screaming the benefits of a caffeine-fuelled beverage called Colapep Dream, and in some instances, marketing the sexual services of men and women on a dating site called Pointe Rouge. Each one passed by, unaware of the conflict, acting as if the world had been sated by loss of life.

Annie knew the plan. Pump one nest full of holes. Duck. Move to the next. Pump the nest full of holes. Duck. Repeat. In the meantime, Four would quickly rig up Eight to the Wolf, attaching him and the Projecto-majig via duct-tape and cable ties. And of course, pray to the highest fucking technocrat that the hidden sniper wouldn’t have time to pop Four before the construction could complete.

Adrenaline didn’t run through her system like a human, but she began to feel her body changing. Mechanical instruments suddenly felt well greased, primed and ready to move. Her eye-sight had unconsciously adjusted to night vision, filtering out the artificial neon brightness of the holo-ghosts. Oxygen levels were automatically filling filtered tanks in case respiratory functions ceased. Hydrogen energy fizzled through the central cortex of her nano-weave skeleton. She had her Railgun ready. It still hummed with power. She felt dangerous. For a brief moment she felt as if she could storm this front on her own, a walking tank of heretical ferocity.

Virtuous, pious, antiquated regime. They would soon know fear.

“You ready?” Four said over the comms link. She could see the red indicators of calculated gun placements. She vibrated with precious, anxious energies.

“Readier than I’ll ever be.”

“On a count of three?”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

Annie’s gun rose to the first indicator and she let loose a quick volley of supersonic railgun shells, each round thudding with precise explosive force into the first birds nest. The alien chattering of plasma rounds spewed at her from the second placement like liquid fire. She ducked behind the APC as she watched the remainder of the concrete barriers crumble. In she went again, pre-aimed, six cannon-like thuds to the shoulder as the stock dug deep into armoured servos. The chattering halted. Several plasma rounds passed through the area where her stomach would have been. She glanced behind, Four was kneeling next to the Wolf, eagerly tending to his part of the process.

Two seconds. Go. She peered out of cover again pre-aimed, only ten rounds left in the magazine. She sent another speedy five into the marked area. She didn’t bother finding cover and followed up the final five into the next target area. A great blue explosion of plasma pulled the second building apart as her Railgun rounds struck bullseye. It was purely the chemicals in her brain, but she felt as if blood pounded through her temples like a victory chorus.

Then, she was pulled apart. One moment she watched the blue glare of a heavy plasma-caster imploding, the next moment she was on the ground. She could smell her internal coolant leaking from somewhere. Another shot ricochetted nearby, bouncing off the road and into a nearby building.

“Sniper!” She screams through her communications network. She can see Four furiously wrapping extra strong black duct-tape around the head of the Wolf, making sure to keep its frontal sensors uncovered. The round was from an anti-material rifle, she can see the shell stuck into her buckled and crumbling chest.

“Hu, get the fuck away theres a — ”

She watches a round bury into the asphalt next to Four. He drops to the ground and begins rolling away into the cover of building.

“It’s okay, I’m covered,” he says over the channel through heavy breathing. The only sensors Annie has screaming at her now are Red. Red and vicious like imminent death.

“Hey Four,” she says over the comms. “I think I’m onto a Cat Fail.”

Any response floated away, following the motion of the holo-ghost performance above. A ballerina segues into a different commercial, the preacher-like politician of European Federation leadership lamenting AUKUS incursions onto their holy soil, into the lands of the pure and innocent. She cannot feel it, but she knows there is moisture in the air, she can see the haziness of a fog that will soon envelop this battlefield, and many close to it. She wonders if there are any others, like her, staring up at the abyss, waiting for the eventual failure, watching these spectral images form and warp into different messages and monsters alike. She thought about that cat, the one that purred before she was unmade, and struggled to picture it. She smelled lavender, she felt warm fur, but a picture never reared its head.

“Hey, Sharkbait,” Eight says. It’s not through the comms channel. She manages to shift her head to see the Wolf, its spherical glass head staring down at her, three red eyes watching, analysing, picking out her signature. Compressed air squirts out of its hydraulics. The Automatic Rail Cannon on its back begins twitching in eager recognition. It’s a beastly machine, easily one of the deadliest pieces of hardware on the field.

A sniper round bounces off the top carapace, dinting reinforced armour plating. Eight-Wolf, now, lunges onto the top of the skeletal APC, and before he lands, the Automatic Rail Cannon begins obliterating the enemy positions. Sparks and forks of lighting follow trajectories of heavy railgun fire as its cannon quickly passes from target to target. It’s like watching a storm, a torrent of supersonic hammers. Annie finds the destruction oddly warming, beautiful. Walls crumble and swell under damage and pressure, plasma implodes into balls of liquid fire. And still the Eight-Wolf continues its barrage into the enemy lines, darting with swiftness into new positions. Annie cannot see this with her own eyes, but she can view Eight-Wolf’s feed in her peripheral. It speeds across terrain and rubble in a fluid organic motion, pouncing across rusting vehicles and broken blocks of monolithic buildings, completely pulverising anything that moves with lightning force. She feels as if the Eight-Wolf should have a new callsign, for it suddenly feels less like a Wolf and more like a Tiger. She’s not even entirely sure how much of Ahmed will be left in this new carcass. He’s traversed a forbidden line, broken the directive, become the immortal machine. She doesn’t care, she doesn’t even remember what this war was about. Gods and technology, fear and hate. Just the same thing every war was ever fought over. Through the red strobing of system warnings, she catches a final glimpse at the Eight-Wolf’s feed; the blizzard of decimation has moved past this warzone, and onto the next.

“Four,” she calls out. He’s there by her side, frightened and feeling. Her Four, her human. “I’d like to go hom — ”