Page 6 of Operation Iron Heart

“You really are a damn tin can,” she said scornfully. “Will hated tin cans because they took his job from him. Why on earth would he make you of all his confidant of all things?” Memories of Will and the bond between them pierced her thoughts and she couldn’t hold it together any longer. She burst into tears. The robot’s forehead rumpled and he reached out to touch her, but she moved away.

“Dammit, stay where you are!” she spat at him and held her hands out defensively. “Why are you doing this to me?” she cried in a tearful voice. “I have nothing to do with either Rochelle or her God-forsaken ex-husband. I clean their fucking villa, nothing more. If you really are a machine that’s seeking revenge for having been sent into that hell and then reprogrammed into a sex robot, I can completely understand that. But I can’t change any of that. I have absolutely nothing to do with it, do you understand?”

The robot’s expression remained stoic and he seemed to be unaffected by her agitation. “Have you got a tablet?” he asked in a serious tone.

It was a simple question and yet Marci really wanted to say no. But whatever he wanted, maybe he would finally leave her in peace if she gave him the only object of value that she possessed, regardless of what he wanted to do with it.

With a sob, she bent down, keeping an eye on him, and removed a panel from the kitchen floor where she hid the tablet whenever she left the apartment to prevent it from being stolen. The robot watched her but didn’t comment on the odd hiding place. After replacing the floor panel, she held the tablet out to him from a safe distance. As soon as he’d taken it, she fled back behind the sofa, which irrationally felt like a safety barrier. Her unwanted guest switched the tablet on and gave the ancient device a few spoken commands that generated a holographic image on its smooth surface.

“Maybe we should sit down,” he suggested when he saw how Marci was tapping her feet nervously.

“OK,” she said hesitantly, sitting what felt like a fairly safe distance from him on the battered sofa. She felt like she was about to lose her mind and asked herself – in vain – what the point of all this was, particularly when he sat next to her and sank into the threadbare cushions, holding the screen up so that she could see it, too. As Marci lent forward to get a better view of the moving 3D recording, her shoulder accidentally brushed against his broad chest. She noticed with surprise that his muscular body was softer, and warmer, than she thought it would be, but didn’t give off any body odour at all.

She felt his eyes rest on her as she stared at the screen but didn’t dare look at him.

The small figure, about the size of her hand, that now emerged in front of her out of the mass of dots of light, was instantly recognisable. Good God, there was no doubt that it was Will, even though she could only make out his face and his upper body. He was wearing a kind of military jumpsuit and over the top, a titanium exoskeleton that wrapped around his broad shoulders as if it had been made for him. His dark blond hair was cut short and his forehead was dirty and drenched in sweat. She swallowed, feeling a stabbing pain in her heart that was so strong that it momentarily missed a beat. No more so than when her husband and the father of her children seemed to speak directly to her.

“If you’re seeing this, Easy,” he whispered in a faltering voice, “I’m dead. I wish I could have said goodbye to you and the children in person, but even more, I wish I could be with you and wrap my arms around you.”

He gasped for breath and Marci saw how difficult it was for him to speak. She wanted to tell him to stop speaking and struggling, but it was just a recording. “I know you’ll be wondering,” he continued with difficulty, “how I could disappear so suddenly like that and why I haven’t contacted you and the boys. The truth is, I couldn’t. Government troops kidnapped me on the way to the Job Centre, and before I came round, they’d already stuck me in this suit, put a chip in my head, rewired my body and fitted my heart with a processor to protect it from failing naturally. I was made into a cyborg, pumped full of chemicals that suppressed all those human instincts that make us flip out, and they sent me and lots of others who’d suffered the same fate into this war. I kept hoping that I would somehow get out of it alive, escape and come back to you, but if you’re seeing this message, then I’ve not made it. I hope you and the boys can forgive my failure. This is why Jack is now sitting next to you and making sure that you’re all safe, because I can no longer do that. He’s actually not called Jack; his real name is a long string of numbers, but I named him Jack because that was my grandfather’s name and it’s the best name to give a good man. Even if he seems strange to you, he is a reliable friend who will get you and the boys out of Chicago, because you’re in great danger. Jack will explain it all to you and be your second guardian angel. I’m the first, and I always will be. I love you three more than my own life, Easy; never forget that. Give the boys a kiss from me. And remember, I will always be with you, whatever happens.”

After the image had faded, Marci stared into the distance for a long time, her heart breaking and a lump in her throat making it hard to breathe. Easy. Will had always called her that because it had been her favourite word when things got difficult, and she said it to turn Will’s worries around. Nobody else knew that, so she realised this message had to be authentic.

When she grasped that she had wronged Will, that instead of leaving her, he’d actually undertaken an involuntary trip to hell, she fell apart. She collapsed onto Jack’s broad chest and started sobbing uncontrollably. Through the fog of tears, she saw his strong arms come around her like a protective wall, holding her like a helpless infant. In the distance, she heard his deep, reassuring voice and the sound of his mechanical heart beating against her ear like clockwork.

“I’m really sorry, but we can’t stay here,” he murmured eventually, and she realised she would have to put her grief aside for later. “Pack some warm things for you and the children and we’ll go. We’re already running late. I turned off the security codes in the villa and put the owner to sleep, but when she wakes up and raises the alarm with security, we’ll no longer be safe here.”

Marci tried to compose herself as Jack helped her up, and she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “So you’re not a machine at all,” she asked in a shaky voice, looking at him with a shell-shocked expression.

“No, I am,” he sighed. “I’m exactly what you assumed when you first laid eyes on me. A combat robot. Will was a hybrid.”

“Hybrid?” murmured Marci, staring uncomprehendingly at Jack.

“Soldiers that are half-human, half-machine,” he explained soberly. “The government is running out of machines, particularly as the prices for military robots have risen to astronomical levels. That’s why, with the help of MacIntyre’s lab, the strategists have moved on to kidnapping unemployed men and women from the slums and turning them into hybrid soldiers against their will. They’re far cheaper to make but, unfortunately, are also more susceptible to injuries. With twenty billion people on Earth, however, most of whom are considered to be basically superfluous, it makes sense to use them as cannon fodder on the front to see how the enemy reacts before deploying the much more expensive robots. The human instinct to fight for survival is greater than a robot’s, which can be a definite advantage for the warring sides.”

“But why don’t these hybrid soldiers desert in droves?” asked Marci. “I mean, they didn’t seek out this fate.”

“You can’t simply run away from the places they’re deployed to. Also, at the beginning of their transformation, there’s an attempt to delete their memories, but it doesn’t work on everyone. After a while, Will was able to remember everything that had once been important in his life. That made it all the more painful for him.”

“That’s just awful,” whispered Marci, putting her hand over her mouth in horror as a choking sound escaped her lips.

“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” she whispered with a panicked expression.

“Because the government and its backers like MacIntyre have kept it confidential,” replied Jack flatly. “They’ve been manipulating the battle reports from the disputed regions for years. And every day, more people disappear from the slums. Nobody worries about them because the authorities aren’t interested in them, and if anyone were to start looking, the search wouldn’t turn up anything.”

“That’s what happened to me,” confirmed Marci gloomily. “Everyone said I was crazy, that Will had run off with another woman.” She gave another sob, feeling guilty for what she’d thought of him. But what was she supposed to have done?

“And where are we going now?” she asked in a disillusioned voice. “Who will help us if, as you say, nobody is interested?”

“There is a place where you’ll all be safe, I’ll take you there. Trust me,” he said, although she didn’t look like she was going to follow this piece of advice. “Don’t worry,” he added with a wry smile, “it’s a good, peaceful place, even if it doesn’t look like it at first.”

“The way you talk, you don’t sound like a machine that’s just following its programming,” replied Marci, wrinkling her forehead. “You look like a person who likes looking after others and you act like it, too.”

“That’s a really nice thing to say.” Jack smiled at her and then became serious again. “It’s also a terrible curse,” he added darkly. “If the government were to find out that there are robots that are capable of independent emotion and can form a kind of resistance against those in power, there will no longer be a war against the Chinese. The war will be against the machines. And at the moment, we wouldn’t come out on top. If you want to know the whole story, you need to hurry so that we can disappear before the government’s bloodhounds turn up here, and there’s still enough left of me to be able to tell you everything.”

Jack happily accepted the offer to change into some of Will’s clothes, but it felt strange to put on the boots of the man who’d died under his care and who made all of this possible.

As he stood in front of Marci and told her to get moving, she looked at him with an oddly faraway expression in her gorgeous brown eyes. He knew what she was thinking. Not because he was naturally good at reading people, he was still working on that, but because his creator had put a program in his neuronal networks that could understand a person’s mental state from their eye contact, the pitch of their voice, the heat they were emitting, their heart rate and their breathing.