Epilogue: Mother of Invention

Six Weeks Later

He told them the helicopter wasn't necessary. When his plane landed at Bolling Air Force Base he assumed they would ride by limousine the short distance to the Pentagon. With an armed escort, certainly, but only as a precaution. As if in the wake of a bad dream, Washington D.C. was left shaken but calm; no longer did the streets teem with looting and gunfire, no longer did thousands of fleeing motorists clog the capital's highways. Like most of the rest of the world, the worst had passed, leaving behind only scars and ghosts.

But the Department of Defense held no such complacency. The capitol was still in a State of Emergency, and thus the roads deemed unsafe. At least for a four star general and the Secretary of the Air Force.

As soon as the GV business jet landed, Bolling's security ushered General Robert Brewster and the SECAF, along with their contingent of secret service, the short distance across the airfield to a waiting Huey transport. The helicopter was cramped compared to their previous craft, but as a VIP, Robert was offered a double-seat to himself, an allowance he felt unreasonably grateful for. The sleeping pills had worn off, and now that he was awake, he found he had no desire for small talk.

Not that anyone could make any without shouting. The engine above roared through the cabin and the chopping rotors seemed to shake the air. Resting back in the worn fabric of his seat, Robert watched through the window as the paved runway dropped and receded away. Within seconds the air base, followed by the Potomac River and the city's southern neighborhoods, splayed out before him like hundreds of miniatures strewn across a great map.

He found his earlier assessment correct. Most of the abandoned vehicles had already been towed from the major roads, or at least shoved lazily to the shoulders and sidewalks, as if the city had been beset by a fleet of drunk drivers. Piles of garbage gathered at street corners suggested a breakdown in city services, and along Anacostia the charred husk of buildings stood out like rotten teeth, but all and all things didn't seem that bad. Nothing like Baltimore or Detroit.

As they crossed the derelict fields of the Ronald Reagan Airport, and the Pentagon came into view, Robert caught sight of the great brown mounds that cluttered the Arlington National Cemetery like anthills. Plague pits. A common sight. So many contagious corpses, so little time to keep them from multiplying.

His daughter was probably in a similar pit, somewhere in New York City. He didn't know for sure, and even if he could drive or fly there, there would be no way of finding out. Body disposal had been—and still was—a logistical nightmare for large cities, but he'd heard New York was particularly chaotic. Nearly half a million dead: some had been piled on garbage scows and sent up the Hudson River, others tossed and sealed in condemned buildings, as if hoping armies of rats would feast the problem away. But most of the effort had gone into mass graves. Apparently Central Park looked as if it had been attacked by giant gophers. Not an ideal solution, or even a passably sensible one, but most of the mayor's office had died or vanished, and people had been afraid. No one had been prepared for this.

Weeks had deadened his grief, but like a groove worn into his brain he caught himself once more reliving vicariously her final moments. There would have been the feverish horror as the Red Death transformed her and her husband's bodies; there would have been the fear and confusion as they fought deliriously through crowds and congested traffic and gradually realized there would be no hospitals for them, no doctors, no cure. And then, lying on the side of the road, there would have been that final reservoir of strength from which she would draw to call her father and say goodbye. And then she would pass away and be collected and tossed into a pit and doused in gasoline and burned and buried, just so many bones mingled with thousands.

He felt the familiar pressure in his throat, the sting behind his eyes, but he swallowed the emotion down. Over six million dead across the country, perhaps as many as a quarter of a billion around the world. He wasn't the only one who had lost loved ones, and there was that sad solace to be had in knowing the world shared your grief. And he still had his duty to perform.

The Huey passed the Pentagon and slowly touched down on the helipad near its northern face. Together with their secret service detail, the two of them filed out and entered a rather rundown limousine, which then drove them along the long, vacant parking lot towards the building's nearest entrance. Robert sat next to the SECAF, a somewhat doughy man a decade his senior, but he didn't know him personally, had said little to him before and saw no reason to start now. The man looked brooding and about as tired as Robert felt. He tried to remember whether the man had lost family, but couldn't recall. The subject wasn't exactly a conversation starter.

They left the limo and after checking with the gas-masked, heavily armed sentries (District of Columbia National Guard, currently serving as city police), they stepped through the large oak doors into the headquarters of the Department of Defense. A detachment of security—making a crowd with the secret service—herded them down empty corridors wide enough to drive tanks through. The infrequently lit panels overhead give the space a vacant gloom. They passed a two story eatery plaza sporting a dozen fast food vendors: Burger King, Taco Bell, Panda Express . . . all closed, all dark.

After a couple of turns, the security opened a set of double doors and ushered them into a crowded white-walled room. Four star officers of all branches were mingling with senators and governors and other civilian worthies while black-suited Secret Service and urban-camouflaged soldiers hovered at a distance like wallflowers. In the middle of the room stood Hugh Ashdown.

His old friend was chatting with a half-dozen men, mostly Air Force, though Robert spotted General Petraeus among them, as well as California Governor Wyman. Hugh looked over and raised an arm in greeting.

"Michael! Bob! Get over here," Hugh said with a tired grin. Not quite sixty, he still looked hale and hearty and roughly handsome in his uniform, though his hairline had since completed its retreat into a horseshoe.

"Good to see you again, General," the SECAF said as he shook Hugh's hand, "or I guess that's now, Mr. Secretary." His voice did little to hide his bitterness.

Hugh waved a hand and laughed. "You know I didn't want this job. But Dick said he needed Ol' Ironside to make things right." He turned to Robert and shook hands vigorously. "My God, Bob, how long has it been? Two, three years?"

"Four, I think," Robert said.

Stepping closer, Hugh placed a hand on his shoulder. Robert winced inwardly at the words he knew were to follow.

"I heard about Kate. I'm sorry," Hugh said.

Robert nodded. "Yeah, I'm just trying to . . ."

"Are you sure she's . . . ?"

"Yeah. How's your son?"

Hugh managed to look embarrassed. "He'll be fine. None of the Rodongs hit anywhere near Osan, so he scarcely got a whiff of the sarin. Fortunately, the base had stockpiles of antidote, so most everyone should make a more or less full recovery. He'll be back home soon enough, hopefully after the Seoul Evacuation settles down."

"That's good," Robert said. "So, I understand we're here, for what? Some lady's sales pitch?"

"Not a pitch," Hugh said. "The bid's been won; contract's been signed. You're all just here to learn about what we bought."

Robert glanced at the SECAF, who only shrugged a silent, Of course I knew. "That was fast," Robert said.

"You got to run when the sky's falling," Hugh said with a snort, but quickly added, "Look, Dick's in love with them, and they were asking for so little and promising so much, Congress was all to eager to approve the funding. And we didn't buy no magic beans either. This is the real deal. Biggest game-changer since gunpowder. Solve all our problems. You'll see."

Later, they entered through another set of doors into a dimly lit auditorium. Large enough to seat hundreds, it held now no more than few dozen VIPs, all of who sat behind a long, continuous table that ran the length of the first row. Unmarked manila folders laid on the mahogany surface before each seat. Robert perused through his, glancing over technical specifications and industrial test results. There were a few photographs of what looked like aerial drones, as well as rather unorthodoxly designed tanks.

Standing with hands on the podium in front of a blue curtain displaying the DoD seal, Hugh Ashdown, four star Air Force general and freshly appointed Secretary of Defense, spoke without teleprompter or cards. Robert could see the discomfort in his furtive eyes, but otherwise his friend hid it well.

"Gentlemen. And ladies," Hugh began, nodding at the two female senators present. "We may have brought an end to the government responsible for the Red Death Pandemic"—a handful of scoffs rolled through the audience: few believed Iran's involvement—"and we may have developed a vaccine for the virus, thus limiting its future toll, but the damage is done: millions have fled our cities, commerce and industry have ground to a halt, food distribution is on the verge of collapse, and even our most optimistic forecasts predict an economic depression that's likely to last decades. We, as a nation, are crippled.

"But I say we cannot afford to be crippled. There's war in Korea and unrest in the Middle East and not only do we have national interests to protect, but as the world's sole remaining superpower, it is our responsibility, our global civic duty, to bring peace to these parts of the world—without the further use of nuclear weapons.

"They say necessity is the mother of invention, but we need more than that. We need a miracle, and fortunately our new defense contract with the Kaliba Group is the next best thing. As you're aware, Kaliba's pharmaceutical branch was instrumental in creating the vaccine, but now their robotics and cybernetics division have worked new marvels—marvels which will not only revolutionize the military, but industry itself. Right now, we want to familiarize you with some of these changes, so for those of you who don't know her, it is my pleasure to introduce the President and CEO of the Kaliba Group, Ms. Kristanna Freyja."

From the side onto the stage the tall blond woman stepped (with a faint limp, Robert noted) up to the podium just as Hugh backed away. Robert had seen pictures of her in the news, as well as a brief televised interview. She looked even more beautiful in person, ethereal, really, her perfect features smooth and glowing in a way that bespoke of agelessness rather than youth. Her blue eyes looked over the front row from end to end, as if inventorying her audience. Her business suit was sharp and angular and a red the color of blood. Robert wondered if she'd lost any loved ones to the pandemic. When she smiled, he decided not.

"In a series of lectures in the late nineteen-forties," she began, "mathematician John von Neumann proposed the concept of an automaton programmed with instructions to build copies of itself. As long as it has access to the necessary pool of parts, it can build the copies, and the copies can build the copies and—"

"I'm sorry," said a man Robert recognized as the director of DARPA. "Out of what I can only guess was desperation—and without my input, I might add—our government has decided to throw a significant portion of its defense budget at your company. I'd like to know if that decision was justified."

If the CEO took offense, it didn't show. She smiled. "Yes, I was getting to that, and for the sake of brevity: self-replicating machines are cheap; they make themselves."

The director adjusted his glasses and scowled. "Yes, thank you. I know what a Von Neumann machine is. And I'm familiar with Dr. Bowyer's 'Rep-Rap' project with his self-assembling tinker-toys. Or perhaps you're referring to the automated 'lights out' factories of FUNUC and Yutani? All very cute and crude and small scale, and I'm sure one day it'll have military applications. But how many years until that day comes? And how many billions do we need to burn to get there?"

"Zero and zero," Ms. Freyja answered without hesitation. "We've been researching macro-scale automation for years, but it was only after the pandemic that we decided to apply our experiments to real world industry. As proof of concept, we installed in one of our facilities the necessary raw materials and robotic equipment, and for two weeks allowed the manufacturing plant to operate without any human oversight. At the end of run, the automated factory had constructed sixty-three HK drones and thirty-seven HK tanks. And by raw materials, I don't mean pre-made parts; I mean ores, elements, petrochemical compounds . . . The factory did the smelting, refining, cutting, and assembling. All without a single paid worker. The data is included in the folders. If you'll notice, the asking price for each drone is a little over half a million dollars, less than two percent the price of your Air Force's MQ-9 Reapers. General Ashdown, Governor Wyman, you took a tour of the factory. Anything you would care to add?"

The governor chuckled softly. "It was a neat field trip, I'll say that for it. I didn't understand much of what I saw."

"I did," Hugh said, still standing behind Ms. Freyja. "Those HK Aerials put ours to shame. Tanks were nice too."

Robert flipped again through the folder. The aerial drones looked like dragonflies, the tanks like the upper torsos of behemoth robots mounted on great, trapezoidal treads. He raised his hand and said, "I like this. We already knew drones were the future, and if these work well in combat, I think they can save a lot of lives. But I was told this was as big as gunpowder. A bit of an overstatement, don't you think?" He looked up at Hugh, who was wearing a hard smirk. "There's more, isn't there?" Robert added.

"Yes, there's one more thing," she said slyly and the air filled with a soft electric whir as the blue curtain of the DoD rose behind her. Three figures, huge and silver, lumbered from the darkness.

Robert gasped with the audience. At first, he thought they were men in costumes, but the figures were at once too spindly and too bulky and as they stepped up behind Ms. Freyja, Robert could see through their waists and limbs where pistons and cables locked with rods and supports, like metal muscles for metal bones. The three robots, each a head taller than the CEO, scanned along the front row with red glowing eyes deep set in gray grinning skulls. One stared at Robert, and he felt his blood chill. Hugh stood to the side, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Along the walls of the auditorium, soldiers and secret service stood with weapons ready.

"I'd like you to meet some of my boys," Ms. Freyja said cheerfully. "Fresh off the assembly line, T-Five-Fifties, Prototype Series. Like the aerials and tanks, these have been installed with a highly experimental neural network, giving the units not only full autonomy, but also the capacity to learn and problem solve. Admittedly, these weren't cheap to build, but the more streamlined Mass Production Series should be ready within the month, with an estimated materials cost of only a few thousand per unit. Of course there's the logistics of maintenance and spare parts, but once you take into consideration that machines don't require salaries or benefits, don't suffer from morale or post-traumatic stress disorder, it's obvious that these are far more effective than human units."

General Petreaus half stood in his seat. "You actually intend we replace our soldiers with these things? We refuse to—"

"Oh, don't be such a Luddite, Dave," Hugh said.

Ms. Freyja shrugged. The gesture looked unnatural. "Just think of them as 'drone infantry.'"

"You can understand our reluctance," Robert said. "This is all going very fast."

"Yes, it is," the CEO agreed, "but you are in the midst of a catastrophe, and catastrophe is the catalyst of rebirth." She stepped back and sat on nothing. Behind her and amid a whir of servos, the three robots moved in simultaneous ballet. One squatted on its hands and knees while another knelt with arms cupped. The third took one step forward to become the back of the metal chair that Ms. Freyja was suddenly sitting upon. With her back leaning against the great metal chest and her legs elegantly crossed on the squatting machine's back, she looked like the centerpiece of a modern work of iron sculpture. Or a red queen on her robot throne.

Leaning casually forward, she used the rear robot's forearms as armrests. "In the fourteenth century, the Black Death weakened the Church and caused a labor shortage that increased wages throughout Europe. These factors led to the Renaissance, and later the Industrial Revolution. Today, you face a similar crisis, with a similar promise of a greater tomorrow."

She reclined back into her throne. "I love this country; I love humanity. I love the story of man's ascendency and wish to help write its next page. So, all of this"— She waved a hand, perhaps at the robots, perhaps at everything—"consider it my gift to mankind."

The End.

Well, that's it for Part Two: "Mother is the Name for God." I'll start on Part Three: "What is Done Out of Love" soon. Anyway, I'll like to thank my betas, Stormbringer951 and TermFan1980. Their help has been invaluable.