That night, an incident occured in one corner of the No. 2 Tokyo Bay Landfill Island Group.
From the base of one of the buildings in a sprawling research area, a sharp explosion echoed in the night, accompanied by a rumbling in the surrounding earth. Immediately afterward, black smoke roiled like an inverted avalanche out of the building’s ground floor entrance.
The windows of the building, which stood at fifty meters tall with fifteen floors, began to shatter, one after another. Silent vibrations shook the black fiber walls.
Every light in the building went out. This was the moment in which the employees of Tokyo Research Lab of MemeFrame Co. — who were big players in the hIE behavior control sector — died.
10:08 PM. A large transport helicopter approached the No. 2 Landfill Island Group from the sea side. The scramble order had come the instant the first explosion had rang out. HOO (Hands Of Operation), the PMC hired by MemeFrame for security, were moving in to take control of the situation.
The helicopter, which had taken off from the heliport at Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, was hauling a massive container.
The pilot, wearing a helmet with a HMD, turned to Sest. “The Japan-stationed US Army and Japanese Army have authorized us for twenty minutes of fly time,” he said. “That’s all the time we’ve got here in the Tokyo airspace. Don’t forget.”
Sest Ackerman was massaging the back of his muscular neck. The helicopter, which was normally used for transporting troops, had been converted into a drone control center. Having served as an elite among America’s Green Berets, it was the kind of workspace that made Sest feel cramped.
“All right Ackerman Squad, let’s review the mission before we get started,” Sest announced. “Our objective is the capture or destruction of the five hIEs that escaped during the explosion at the lab. All lab personnel have already evacuated to their shelters.”
As a mission objective, it was extremely odd.
The whole idea of hIEs ‘escaping’ was patently ridiculous. hIEs looked like humans, but their every move was controlled externally. Every action was optimal, selected from a specialized program and expansive sampling of behaviors accessed through a central network. In other words, hIEs were nothing more than puppets, dancing on the invisible strings of wireless network signals.
MemeFrame was a mega-corporation that controlled the hIE behavior management cloud, meaning that Sest and his team were on a mission equivalent to a puppeteer saying, “My puppets have run away, go and catch them.”
The helicopter rotors were quiet. Silent enough, in fact, that even in the quiet of the night it would be hard to make out the sound as the helicopter maintained its height and wove through the darkness.
The scramble team rushing to the scene was comprised of three men: the helicopter pilot, Sergeant Thomas Lieu; an operator, Sergeant Major Youseff Malai; and Sest, their captain. None of them commented on the strangeness of their mission. They were professionals.
Using the transmitter implant in his skull, Sest contacted the HOO tactical command center through a datalink. “Major,” he said, “we’ve arrived at the target area. Beginning sensor sweeps for the enemy.”
Using the helicopter’s thermal sensor, they confirmed five human-sized heat signatures. The signatures were heading away from the central research building of the MemeFrame Tokyo Research Lab, toward the No. 1 Landfill Island Group.
HOO used an AI in the command center to formulate tactical strategies for their combat units. At that moment it was providing a tactical prediction. The AI’s suggestion was to allow the hIEs to cross the bridge to Odaiba’s residential district.
It wanted them to conduct urban combat in a residential area.
Sest folded his well-toned arms. “That’s nuts,” he grumbled. It was a plan usually held back as a last resort when intercepting unmanned combat units, because computer-controlled weapons could not decide for themselves to attack a human being. In those situations, the machines were simply tools that had to wait for their owner’s permission before acting. In other words, the AI was instructing them to take advantage of the reduced freedom experienced by unmanned combat units that carelessly entered highly populated areas.
The image of the top half of a woman wearing a military cap slipped into Sest’s retinal display.
〈We need to reduce the sensitivity of the command center AI,〉 she announced. 〈The client has assessed the threat level of this mission as fairly high. That’s why they requested an emergency scramble from us. But, I don’t think they actually want an all-out war in a residential area.〉
Major Collidenne Lemaire was a calm commander in her forties. Sest hadn’t the faintest idea of her military background.
“What should we do about the AI’s strategy, Major?” he asked. Sest’s confidence wasn’t shaken in the face of complications; he was a veteran. He had enlisted in the army at eighteen and served for sixteen years. The guns he used had gotten bigger, and his rank had gone up to Second Lieutenant, but he always stayed the same strong and loyal soldier.
〈I’m authorizing you to reject the proposal,〉 she told him. 〈The police are forming a blockade on the bridge with their cars, so it wouldn’t be realistic to try and chase the targets into the residential district.〉
It wasn’t that the major was a humanitarian; she just wanted to avoid engaging the targets on a bridge. “Combat drones were useless underwater,” she would have said. “The light and radio waves of the wireless signals used to control them wouldn’t reach.” For an emergency land combat team that relied on drones, this meant that any target that fell into the water would be out of their reach.
“What’s plan B, major?” Sest wanted to know.