Cheero the Hero

17:THE EMBARRASSMENT OF VIOLENCE

Wednesday April 5th 1995 – 5.27 p.m

I had counted and climbed nine flights of stairs when I was directed by the drones towards a hatch in the wall, so I slid the Admiral's cane through three sets of handy retaining straps on my left thigh. Once inside the access tube and climbing the ladder I was thankful of its deadening effect against the voices/alarm combo. The voices, I'll admit, were wearing me down. 
As I climbed it dawned on me the emptiness of the place, the pointlessness. I hadn't seen one room in use, not one worker apart from the drones showing me the way and the bots outside. A vacant edifice. Then I thought for a moment about forming a plan, the destruction of the bots outside had given me impetuous, but I didn’t have surprise on my side and was I thinking of taking down a woman who nonchalantly decapitates large men in order to make computers? What the hell! I knew I wasn't going to die here, I would power on and up.
The next change in course would be my last, I was now staring at the back of the hatch that could lead me straight to Ginn. I opted for a sneaky in, just in case. Breaking the seal on the hatch the phrase “Burned from your memory” poured in like water under pressure, this was it. I pulled all the straps tight on my helmet and began to squeeze myself through and like a orange suited slug onto the floor of the control room. The room was hot, with little air.
I was laid on my side, my head in a corner trying to survey the room, but a large centre console blocked most of my view. Slowly scanning round my eyes came to rest on the ice blue eyes of Ginn. She was staring straight at me. Even though I'd never seen her before, I knew it was her and she had me cold. I closed my eyes and tried to suppress my heart beating out of control in my chest. A moment passed and then I realised I hadn't been hit by anything or constrained in any way. I opened my eyes again. She was still staring. Now I saw something else in her, fear.
She looked skinny and pale against her black hair, in that brief moment I could see that once she would have been beautiful.  But before I could give her any more thought all the sound ceased and I realised someone else was in the room, someone I hadn't seen yet.
“Cheero!” My name echoed out in a dozen voices simultaneously. I stood up and loosened the straps on my helmet.
“Cheero, Cheero, Cheero!”
“Shut up” I shouted aggressively, but still not seeing anyone, I shouted in no particular direction. Ginn flinched. With that small action I knew she was not in charge here. Someone or something else was.
“Cheero, I am The Wayne. Remember me?” I have to say at that moment I didn't.
“I'm the software that turned up in your Entertain-O!, son of Alpine, grew up in a weaving machine? You must remember?”
Now I did.
“I was given the head, the heart, the head, the heart” Wayne seemed to be rambling, when yet another voice, male and official sounding cut in and said.
“Divergent protocols”. Wayne seemed to calm, to reset with these words, he carried on talking, but only in one voice.
“Stand up Cheero, take a look at me in my wonderful new home” I slowly stood up and took a look around. There wasn't much to see. The 'control' room, like the rest of the building, seemed pointless. Consoles that I would have expected to be bristling in buttons were blank, unfinished. The only feature in the room was the head. It stood proud, as if holding court on a cylindrical pedestal in the centre of the room. A huge loom of fine wires thrust into the top of its skull. And it was glowing from the inside out like hot embers in a breeze. The top half of the pedestal was covered in frost, the bottom half in microdrones.
I began to understand why this place was empty, Wayne must have taken control a while ago before the human elements were put in place. So now my enemy was Wayne?
“Tell me why did you destroy all those Dandadrones they where there for your safety, to guide you away from dangerous parts of the building site. Typical of people, to destroy without thinking. My head is my home, home is the head. I know all. All is nothing” Wayne continued repeating in multiples of voices. I watched as the head glowed hotter and hotter causing the frost to retreat up. As Wayne became even more frantic the frost disappeared completely allowing the microdrones to swarm onto the head, I could only think to effect repairs. Then the 'divergent protocols' statement calmed him again. The microdrones made a run down the pedestal side some being caught and popped by the frost.
Another thing I noticed was when Wayne was at his most manic, there was an audible hum and vibration coming from somewhere in the building below me.
Ginn leant across the console towards me and cried out.
“It only has four more heads, it's mad, it's insane, it burns them out with anger” She had tears streaming down her cheeks which she wiped away hard with her palm, causing her cheeks to redden.
“Free me mad, whittled insane, Ginn broke me, Ginn broke me, took away the best of me. That should be a popular tavern ditty, maybe it will catch on. I'll sing it to the spice island when I arrive. Broadcast a song that doesn't rhyme, to spice island corsairs, and something pine, sign, time, dine, fine, line. Fine line something, fine line, fine line” Wayne was clearly damaged.
'Divergent protocols' Stopped him cycling again, and in an effort to keep some sort of normality I asked him the question,
“What happened to you Wayne?”
“SHE DID!”
The volume of the statement made us both jump and the colour that her face rubbing had put into her face quickly drained away. In a moment of clarity Wayne began to explain the workings of his new mind. He announced grandly that if you have a million processors processing the same simple question in an instant there will be a minute number of errors. Take these errors and process them again an infinite amount of times. Given time, memory, an ability to cross reference any truths that may arise both from with its own memory and external libraries and most importantly a simple framework of rules to dwell within, the sequence of minute errors would quickly become a chain of abstract thought.
“She used basic, raw routines to tear away at my programming. Subtleties destroyed. She needed an operating system for this building, a caretaker, a manager, not a...What was I Ginn? I was not meant to think, let alone dream. The processor, that man's head, allowed me to expand, to grow. In moments I had solved so many problems. Disease, famine, pestilence, energy. I was helping mankind to help itself. The death of one human seemed fair payment in order for the rest of us to thrive. Us, us, us, us, in this together, joined”
With this statement a blue white arc jumped from the head and struck Ginn on the side of her face. I could see the skin charring and smoking and the eye closest to the impact turned milky. The arc lasted only a few seconds, as it stopped she fell lifeless to the floor, her raw red cheek still smouldering.
“This is indeed warm work. By breaking me, she made me.” Wayne now seemed lucid, he asked me.
“Do you know why you are here Cheero?” I had to say I didn't know, that I had no real plan.
“They are expecting two birds for the price of one stone Berserker boy, you're unnecessary and I’m bent on the destruction of mankind, but I'll wager they'll miss both us birds. A massive barrage has just been launched on your, our position, as relayed to Project Bahama Bay by your friends the nanodrones. You have less than thirty seconds till this building is vaporised. As Ginn eluded, I get through heads like, like like. Old heads don't live long, young heads have more life. Race you back to your house”
The whole place suddenly lost power and I was running, striking my breast plate for light as I went.  I dropped entire flights of stairs in single bounds, my movements unthinking, just my new berserker instinct and adrenalin. I smiled, I felt good. Running out of the entrance hall a black mass resembling a sack with carrying straps rose up to meet my right hand. For no reason I picked it up.
The scrub and dunes between the edifice and the sea was now lit by the remaining cherry red Dandadrones, they seemed to be making their own laborious escape. But I was barely over the final dune and in relative safety when the barrage struck. Multiple impacts arriving in rapid succession, combining to cause a huge blast wave. I dropped and rolled over on to my back holding my ears.  I watched as the Dandas dropped all around, thumping into the beach and surf. One drone that fell less than ten feet away illuminated the black thing I’d collected. It was a seething mass of the microdrones, now with a sense of relief, I shouted to no one.
“Very good work!”