Temporis XXIX - The Epicenter

The old Samuel Shell

1

- Frankie, I've told you about many cases, but I don't remember telling you about the beginning of the war. Have I?

- No, Sam. I don't remember anything about the beginning of the war. Frankie almost felt sorry for the old man.

She had heard hundreds of stories to the point that she convinced herself he had lived some of them.

Every time Sam shared the same story, it seemed to become better and sharper. Deep down, Frankie loved imagining a world so different from nowadays, despite the tragedy of his stories.

- Those goddamn fools started the war! The old Sam said. I remember as if it was today. The fall of a civil airplane with the vice president of the United States on board was the last drop.

A missile had accomplished its mission. It was the beginning of the third war. A conventional war soon became nuclear. The Koreas were the first to be burnt, followed by some parts of Japan and South East Asia.

- Those pinstriped bureaucrats from Washington, always late, couldn't come up with an agreement in time to avoid losing the West coast. It all became ashes in a matter of time. Only ashes. Silence.

Some minutes later, the old Sam with his eyes lost in the distance seemed to be off.

Frankie had already witnessed something like this before, the old man seated with a glass in his hand with no movements for hours.

Suddenly, he started to talk.

- They called the war "The Pacific ring of fire". With the comeback of the conventional war, we started to lose territory. The enemy could lose hundreds of soldiers to radiation without affecting their efforts of war. It is true that most of them were political prisoners or those purged from the system, and it wouldn't matter if they fought or simply died.

- The only use of these unfortunate ones was to waist our ammunition and stress our defense lines. Right when we were at our worst moment in the war, we released a cybernetic counterattack.

It took some years to improve the technology of space mining and adequate it to a conventional war, but it was an immediate success.

The first units to start the combat eliminated their targets easily with minimum loss. With no human loss, only some robots seriously wrecked that could easily be replaced.

The real soldiers were very safe in subterranean bunkers away from the action sites.

There were places where these new weapons could not be successfully used: marshlands, deserts, minefields contaminated by radiation or chemical and biological weapons, including civil areas.

Samuel stopped for a minute to sip his whisky and decided to fill his glass again.

- I was considered a brilliant military. I created many tactics for the army of tin soldiers. Brilliant, they said! I was a goddamn criminal of war. The hatred consumed me, and I wanted vengeance at any cost. I didn't spare anything or anyone. Do you want to know how the expression "army of tin soldiers" was coined?

It was General Mann who gave this nickname, after the end of the first battle and the smashing victory over the enemy.

The amazing thing about this weapon was the perfect integration between man and machine. The robot soldier was built with two brains. The first one controlled the basic operation of movements, communication, weapons, basic rules of survival, defensive mechanisms and escape. The second one received the memory of the soldier. When these two brains integrated themselves, this machine became the perfect killing machine. The conscience of the soldier was transferred to this second brain in a matter of seconds. Soldier and robot didn't have to be connected. Robots could be disconnected for long periods from the soldiers that stayed in a suspended state at the bunkers.