Time Riders

CHAPTER 40

1956, Washington DC

Bob observed the hive of activity going on around him. His cold eyes locked on andstudied the giant disc floating gracefully above the city and intermittently spewing outtroops. He could hear the distant rattle of gunfire, the muffled thud of explosions.

Somewhere in the city, small pockets of American soldiers were still holding out, unawarethat the struggle was all over, that their leader, President Eisenhower, had gone downfighting, and even now his body was being carried out and laid across the steps in front ofthe building along with the rest of his cabinet and chiefs of staff.

An officer standing nearby adjusting his tunic and Wehrmacht peaked cap, no longer encumberedwith a drop suit, was hurriedly directing activity on the ground.

‘You!’ He pointed at Bob. ‘You can remove the mask. The air’sclear.’

Bob silently removed the gas mask. His hair — only a fortnight’s worth of growth,still just coarse bristles — and his hard emotionless face made him look no differentfrom the other storm-troopers around him.

‘When we’ve tidied up the mess out here, then you can take a rest,’ theofficer said. ‘Now, get a move on, man.’

Bob’s eyes narrowed as he made a millisecond calculation on whether he should continueto pretend being an enemy unit or sprint a dozen paces across the ruttedgrass and effortlessly rip this man’s arms from their sockets.

[Attack: tactically incorrect at this moment]

He turned away and reached down for the body of a marine, flinging the ragged remains overhis shoulder and carrying it across to where a pile of corpses was slowly growing. As he didso, Bob’s inexperienced silicon mind worked on a bigger issue, more important than anyimmediate tactical assessments. He had a strategic command decision to make…

Tactical Options:

1. Rescue Operative Liam O’Connor

2. Return to field office with gatheredintelligence

3. Prevent further contamination — self-terminate

Bob’s AI routines worked more efficiently with smaller numbers of options oneach branch of its decision tree — two or three was the ideal number. Any larger anarray of choices slowed down the risk-assessment processing exponentially.

He scanned the prisoners clustered together and identified Liam crouched miserably among themand looking back at him. If Bob had had a little more time to become more familiar with humanfacial expressions and muscle tics, he might have been able to recognize the mixture of fear,anger and betrayal written across the young man’s face.

His eyes suddenly registered a growing commotion among the cedar trees; the place where thetime window had been due to open. Soldiers were gathering round something on the ground — something unpleasant enough for one or two of themto double over and dry-heave.

Whatever was going on it was becoming too busy to clear the area, too busy to consider it aviable extraction point, for now, at least. He decided the option that bestsatisfied the mission’s parameters was the first option: to rescue Liam.

Option 2 left Liam stuck in the past where he might potentially be tortured and exposedangerously revealing details of the future.

Option 3, to trigger his computer brain to fry itself, achieved absolutely nothing useful atthis moment in time.

He cocked his head.

Option 1 had the highest mission-relevance rating. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Option 1 Solution Assessment:

1. AWAIT 2nd extraction window — 57.30 minutes’time

2. IF success of extracting Liam is greater than 25 %, THEN proceed

3. ELSE… Await 3rd extraction window in 24hours

Bob opened his eyes and tossed the corpse he’d been carrying on to the pile.The solution was an acceptable one, even though it amounted to little more than wait and see. He was not going to leave nor was he going to terminatehimself; instead he was going to wait for a better opportunity to rescue Liam to presentitself.

But, he realized, something else had been factored into the decision, something to which hecouldn’t assign a recognizable label.

For now he decided to give it the name indefinable factor.

This indefinable factor wasn’t coming from his database orhis AI code; it was coming from the small part of his brain that was organic, the tiny nub ofwrinkled flesh in his skull linked by a myriad hair-thin wires to his on-board siliconwafer-cell computer. And all this indefinable factor could do was whisper avery illogical and impractical message into his logical computer, an awkward message that wasbeginning to cause a little confusion amid his carefully ordered AI code.

Liam O’Connor is my friend.