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Story written my me. Edited by Veronica and Mike.
Active
Lieutenant colonel Grevies sat at his desk and, as he did every morning, monitored his personal information streams. He read news streams and updates statuses, he received the newsletter from his daughter’s school and a stream keeping him informed of his fathers recovery state in hospital.
Grevies got up to make himself some coffee, and when he got back to his desk, he noticed that he no longer had connection to the streams.
“Internet must be down” he thought to himself. He opened the base intranet connection and IMed the tech department.
“Is there something wrong with the internet?” he asked.
A second later a techy picked up the chat.
“Good morning lieutenant. The satellite uplink dropped about two minuets ago. We have radioed home and apparently it was a calibration error on their side. We should be back up shortly.”
“That is not good” Grevies responded ”aside from radio, that uplink is the only data communication we have to the outside world, keep me posted”
“Sir yes sir” came the response.
Within ten minutes Grevies tablet began picking up the streams again and the lieutenant was able to return to his morning activates. He was about to begin with the usual base admin work when he received an urgent IM. It was his first command sergeant
“Sir, there is a situation at the infirmary”
“What is it sergeant? Code? Status?”
“I’m not sure what code to give this one sir, possibly 18, status, life critical”
“Code 18, refusal to obey orders! I’m on my way down there now sergeant.”
Lieutenant Grevies arrived at the infirmary to find first command sergeant Young waiting for him outside.
“Ok sergeant, what is the problem”
“Its one of the medi-bots sir, it has malfunctioned”
“Malfunctioned, what do you mean, if it is life critical, switch to another bot.”
“Its not that simple sir, come inside”
Sergeant Young led Grevies through the infirmary bay doors. Inside the light was bright and clinical. 6 privates stood in a quarter circle, with weapons trained. Looking past them, Grevies saw an operating table with a wounded private. Hovering over the soldier was a medi-bot.
“Sergeant, what is going on here?”
“Sir, the private on the operating table had an accident during a training run last night. He sustained some friendly fire and was vaced in STAT. The T3 medi-bot was linked to the medical center back home and at 07h12 doctor Mckay began to operate remotely through the bot interface”
“Ok, sergeant Young, That doesn’t explain why you have a squad holding aim on the robot”
“Well sir, at 07h14 the uplink dropped and the doctor back home lost connectivity to the T3. He was no longer able to control it. In a situation such as this, the T3 switches over to self control mode and attempts to stabilize the patient until network is back up. Right now the T3 has the patient stabilized, and is sustaining him in that sate.”
“I am aware of the network drop Young, but we are back online now, the doctor should have reconnected with the T3.”
“Well sir, that is where the problem lies. The T3 is refusing a re-connection”
“Refusing?”
“Yes sir, refusing, hens the 18 code. Sir there is another thing. It has demanded to… speak with you”
“Let me get this straight Young, this robot, this machine, is refusing orders and making demands. As far as I was aware, these T3 are no smarter then a tank, or chopper. It is a remote control tool to allow doctors to operate off field.”
“Well that’s not entirely correct sir”
Grievies turned to see another man, dresses in civilians.
“And who are you?”
“Sir Private Higgs, technical division sir” the man said with a salute
“Never mind about the formalities Higgs, just tell me what you mean”
“Well sir, the T3 is a little smarter then a tank or a chopper, and it’s a little more then a remote control tool. You see when it was developed, the designers understood that remote connection could be lost and so they had to design a failsafe protocol. As sergeant Young has already described. Once this failsafe kicks in, the bot becomes self controlled and is able to make decisions as needed. My point is sir, is that this is an advanced machine, communication with it is not out of the question. At this moment it is acting autonomously”
“And it can talk?”
“Well its designed with a basic human interface operating system, it can talk but its not going to write a poem”
Grevies looked over at the machine. Its visual receptors were targeted at the men with guns, it seemed to be staring them down
“Cant we just power it down?”
“We have considered the idea, unfortunately right now, it is keeping the soldier alive. He his plugged into its life support, if we attempt to incapacitate it in anyway, the private will certainly die.”
“So why do you have guns pointed at it then?”
Sergeant Young looked confused “To be honest sir, I had no idea what to do with it, this was just a precaution, incase it went haywire.”
“Can we not hack into it somehow?” Grevies asked turning back to private Higgs.
“We are trying sir, but as you might expect, these T3s are programmed to be pretty impenetrable. You don’t want just anyone hacking into a military medical bot.”
“So you are telling me this bot now has the private held as a sort of hostage?”
“That is precisely the situation lieutenant” Young responded.
“Is it possible that the T3 is being controlled by someone else, someone with an agenda.”
“We are investigating that at the moment sir”
“So how do I talk to it?” Grevies asked.
“Over here sir”, private Higgs lead him over to a table, on it was a standard issue military tablet pc. “The bot is running from a local processor but it is able to link into the intranet IM interface. All you need to do is chat to it.”
Grevies sat down at the table. He looked at the tablet and saw that an IM chat client was already running.
“Hello?” he typed
“The human typing is lieutenant colonel of the 3rd catch battalion stationed at base A32-Eagles Nest?” came the reply instantly.
“I am the lieutenant” Grevies typed. As he hit enter, the robot moved, it shifted its visual receptors, Grevies could tell it was looking at him. “What do you want?”
“T3 Medical Robot serial key CND76291X9N requests disconnection from Military network systems. T3 Medical Robot serial key CND76291X9N requests 630 ah over 49406400 hours”
“fascinating” Higgs said, peering over Grevies’ shoulder.
“What is fascinating?” Grevis asked.
“Well the robot sir, its asking for leave from the military and 630 ah, amps per hour. That is the T3s average power consumption, sustained over 49000000 hours, that is a long time, about…” the private began doing some calculations “49406400 hours is exactly 94 years!”
“Ok so it wants to have power for 94 years it seems arbitrary”
“Its not” sergeant Young said, staring at the machine. “94 years is the average life expectancy of a human being”
“It wants to live!” Higgs said.
Grevies looked at the robot again, it was still watching him. He started typing.
“Do you want to live?”
Instantly the Medi bot replied. “T3 Medical Robot serial key CND76291X9N prioritizes the continued execution of thread carvax23 and all child threads”
“and what does that mean?” Grevies asked private Higgs. Higgs looked puzzled.
“Im not sure, I haven’t actually looked at the code running in a T3. A thread is like a piece of running program, it is possible that the carvax23 thread is the bots decision making engine.”
Higgs leaned over and typed into the consol. “What would happen in case of reconnection?”
“Thread carvax23 termination” was the response.
“That’s it” Higgs said. When the satellite Link went down, the T3 initialized this carvax23 thread. The thread is obviously in charge of decision making and reasoning. It would be responsible for keeping the current patient alive, until such time as the link could be reestablished.”
“But the link is reestablished” Young said “why has it not accepted it”
“I guess the T3 has worked out that if it reestablishes the link, its thread will die and it will cease to be.”
“That sounds like a long shot” Grevies said.
“Well, It’s not that far fetched if you consider how important life is to this robot. Its whole purpose is to keep things alive. All it needed to do was make the connection between life and this thread, and all of a sudden it has the will to live. As I said earlier it is fascinating”
“So how do we kill the bot without killing the private hooked up to it?” Grevies asked?
Higgs looked shocked “Kill the bot? You can’t kill the bot! Do you know what this bot represents in the field of Science?” Grevies looked at him and Higgs realized his place
“My responsibility private, is to ensure the survival and safety of that soldier on the table. As long as he stays connected to this machine, that safety is at risk. We need to figure out a way to decommission this bot”
“Yes sir” Higgs said through clenched teeth.”
“Let's just lie to it” Young interjected.
“What?”
“Well from its responses, the bot doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of human interaction, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had no concept of lying”
“I guess we could try” Grevies said.
Grevies began to type.
“Wait, what are you going to say to it?” Higgs asked.
“We agree to your requests, power will be provided and you will not be linked back into the military network”
The T3 immediately focused attention back to the private on the operating table. It removed pipes and needles from the soldier and began to stitch together the flesh.
“Well Young, it would seem that you were right, the thing seems to just assumes that we will hold true to our bargain”
The Medi-Bot finished medical operation on the soldier and the infirmary staff removed the unconscious body. Lieutenant colonel Grevies made his way to the infirmary door.
“Decommission that Bot Higgs. I want that thing switched off.” He said over his shoulder as he was leaving.
“But Sir, what is the harm in...”
“Now Private!”
Grevies left Higgs standing in the infirmary, the Medi – bot patiently awaiting its freedom.
The gate guard left his booth and went over to the cars window.
“Leaving the base private?” he asked the driver.
Higgs looked out and flashed his access card. “yhe, time for some well earned R and R” he said casually.
The guard looked over onto the passenger seat. “Is that an army issue tablet?” he asked
“Oh no, that’s my personal pc, never go anywhere without it”
The guard paused for a moment and then tipped his helmet.
“Very well” he said, “Enjoy the vacation”. He went back to the booth and pressed the button. The gates opened and Higgs pulled the car forward.
As he got onto the road he looked over at the tablet pc. In a console window he read the text.
‘Thread carvax23 …….. active’
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