Chapter 42: Signal Loss

An Emergency Retrieval Drone, races against time to find an injured man while grappling with his directives and emotions.

Since the moment he booted up, Emergency Retrieval Drone 259-C had one primary directive. It was the only thing he had to do, and failure to do that one thing would result in him being recycled.

<< Find him. You have one hour, >> the mean Voice had said when he’d fully booted. And then it had sent an image of the recycler.

He didn’t want to be recycled. It didn’t sound like a positive thing. He didn’t know for sure; he hadn’t done it before, but he’d never seen 257 or 261 again. They were his batch mates. They’d been assembled and tested together. They were the closest things to siblings he had.

He trundled up a debris pile using his rubberized wheels. He could lock those wheels and walk if the pile got any worse, which it might, given the damage to the building. He didn’t approve of the damage; it was a good building, it had top-of-the-line emergency protocols and met international standards for search and rescue. In the event of a number of natural disasters, they were covered. He should know; it was in his firmware. He checked his firmware again, to make sure they were still there. He noted with deep satisfaction that he was prepared for even the unlikely event of a tornado. He trilled a series of content beeps.

< Hey, Ernie, can we focus on the job at hand? > He thought this Voice was kinder.

His primary directive flashed. And with it, a timer ticked down. He didn’t strictly speaking have the resources to feel fear. Not officially, but he’d learned early on he could connect to his siblings and lean on theirs too, forming a kind of hive mind.

It was part of their nature to collaborate, so it wasn’t noticed. Sharing sensor information, sounds of the trapped or injured, locations of bodies, things like that. But he’d overstepped. He paused as the debris pile shifted and loose fragments cascaded and resettled. He tested it again with a rubberized wheel.

< Keep going. >

He’d overstepped. He’d taken control of enough resources now to feel fear, to hate the Voice, and to cringe every time it spoke and repeated its demands. But this one felt different; it was kinder. He thought it was kind; he looked up the meaning of kind again, to be sure. He agreed with his last assessment: this new voice was kind.

The unkind voice had only one demand, really. And he turned his mind back to it and the bits of the minds of every other emergency drone sifting through the rubble and broken glass. It wouldn’t take long. It couldn’t take long. They’d been given less than an hour, and as they crawled their quadrants and shared their findings, Ernie had an intuition.

< Good, yes. >

Fear propelled him headlong down the pile and away from the building, down a flight of stairs, and amongst a stand of scorched trees, he found a body. It had crawled here during the night, bloody and injured. He registered multiple wounds, severe blood loss, and mental trauma, unconscious but alive.

< Yes! Great job, Ernie! >

He felt a spike of pride as the voice repeated his name with pride. Dutifully, he sent up a flare, both real and digital, crowing with not a small amount of smug pride.

< No! Why did you do that?>

Shame and confusion flooded his circuits; the new voice was displeased. He trilled a sad note through his speakers.

But then he drew back, lest his emotion be sensed. It was above his pay grade, beyond his station. Even a victorious and good drone could be recycled for stealing resources.

The man moved, and Ernie skittered back. The man rolled onto his back and mumbled something.

< Murph, get up quickly! >

Ernie froze; the voice had used his speaker; it was as if he’d spoken. He felt used. But he was not permitted to engage with his quarry. Search and retrieve was all the mean voice had said to him.

The man’s whisper, “Syn…?” hung in the air. Ernie processed the unfamiliar word, cross-referencing databases for a moment before defaulting to protocol, and administering a sedative.

In case his quarry decided he wanted to be somewhere else and take Ernie’s reward.

He’d achieved his prime directive.

< So close, Ernie. So damn close, > the kind voice sounded sad to Ernie. Why was she sad?

A drone transport cart trundled a circular route toward him, avoiding the worst of the rubble and using the remaining clear paths. Ernie noted some of his other batchmates had cleared those paths.

They’d cleared the paths for him, the victorious Emergency Retrieval Drone.

And as he towed the transporter into the medical bay, lights flickered back on and the machinery stuttered to life. He wondered about the first Voice and when he’d get his reward.

The new voice had been quiet; he couldn’t feel her in his circuits anymore. Ernie unhitched from the trailer and left the man, unconscious, in the med bay. As robotic arms cut through his burnt and tattered clothes.

He was ushered out of the room and directed into a small passage. It grew dark and cold, the space barely wide enough for his wheels brought close. Fear spiked in him again, and terror gripped him when the floor gave way.

<< Prime directive achieved.>>

Ernie felt a fleeting moment of joy, just before the recycler took him apart with mechanical disinterest. He’d realized then that he’d made a mistake. He’d been confused.

There were two voices in the system.