I arrived at the observation post as the first light of the morning sun spilt over the horizon, bathing the African grasslands in a warm glow. A sea of tall grasses swayed in the breeze, their tips catching the sun's rays and covering the open plains in muted shades of green, yellow, and gold.
To the right was a thickly wooded area where wild oak, olive, and pistachio trees providing shade and sustenance for the creatures that roamed the glades beneath the protective canopy. The air was cool and fresh, scented with the earthy fragrance of wild herbs. A waterhole close to the wood mirrored the sky, its surface still and pallid. The pool was a vital source of life, and the water's edge bore the tracks of the creatures that came by to drink.
Yesterday a herd of buffalo, at the end of a long trek, and driven almost mad with thirst, had stampeded into the pool, transforming the clear water in a turgid suspension of sand and mud, the reason why the family group of my early human ancestors, homo erectus, had now left their camp.
I had been watching the group since first spotted the smoke from their fire three days ago, and decided to investigate, first checking my crossbow and supply of arrows. although I had no intention of harming them unless I was attacked. The route down the hillside had been uncomfortable, but straightforward, and I was making my way to the wooded area when I saw two figures carrying gourds in an area of open grassland.
I flattened myself on the ground before they saw me. They were heading for the waterhole and, on reaching the water's edge, carefully examined the tracks of the animals that had drunk there the night before. I cautiously raised myself on two elbows and trained my powerful binoculars on the two crouched figures.
Hair covered their backs, but it was not as dense as that of an animal, and I could see the brown skin beneath. One of them unexpectedly turned his head, and my lens focused on his wide jaws and the biggest teeth I had ever seen on a man, for he was a man, albeit a primitive, and when he raised himself, he stood up straight.
His companion ended his inspection of the tracks, and they filled the gourds with water. They turned to return to the camp, and I glimpsed their sun-blackened faces and unusually sloped heads. Their flat noses, wide jaws, and vicious-looking teeth would not have looked out of place on a slim gorilla. I gave them time to disappear into the jungle area and retreated up the hill. It was not cowardice but a tactical move, for I would get a better view of their encampment from high ground. Trying to stalk these native beings on foot without them spotting me was impossible, and potentially fatal.
I climbed to a higher vantage point on a rocky ledge jutting out from the hillside and gained a perfect view of the inhabitants of the camp through my binoculars. There were about ten of them in total: a couple of nursing infants and four young children, around three years old; it was impossible to put an accurate age on them. I later observed that these children were surprisingly self-sufficient with virtually no parental supervision; this was an environment where you had to grow up fast. The adults varied in height; most were smaller than modern humans, but a few were close in size, and they all wore rudimentary clothing, often little more than a loincloth. I could not help but wonder if I might carry some trace of their ancient DNA.
The morning ritual was to fill gourds from the waterhole, and when two women came back the next day and emptied the foul water on the ground, they voted to move on. All they left on the site were a hearth and the remains of primitive shelters.
This world was the planet Earth about two million years before the Common Era. The machines had long been able to navigate time zones, and the mission controllers situated our base camp in a pre-civilisation era to avoid detection. A human crew of operatives had been sent into a time zone in the future of the zone we now occupied. Their mission was to establish contact with what was confidently assumed to be a machine government. They would then arrange for the government to undertake preliminary talks with AI representatives from our own world.
Sending a delegation of machines to establish first contact was a safety measure, otherwise it might have been seen as a prelude to a hostile invasion. A machine government would recognise humans as slave emissaries, and not a threat.
I spent the morning gathering samples of plant life and stopped in a wooded area at midday to rest and drink from my water pouch. I leaned my crossbow against the trunk of a tree, grateful for the shade, and fell into a light sleep.
The unpleasant sensation of flies crawling across my face awoke me, and I brushed them away. It was time to move on anyway, and I reached around the trunk to pick up my crossbow.
It was no longer there.
I sprang to my feet in panic and searched the immediate area, looking for some sort of clue as to who had taken my weapon. A wild animal would hardly have taken the bow and left me untouched. Had the hominids returned?
My wristband glowed red, and the loss of the crossbow became instantly unimportant.
Red was an imperative command to return to Base, and 'imperative' meant just that.
I started to run.
I knew King would be tracking me, and any failure to comply with the order would result in severe punishment. The going was hard in the heat of midday, and I rationed my energy by running for five minutes and then walking for two. I could justify this tactic if called upon by King, but I rehearsed the explanation in my head to be word-perfect.
King would not allow me much time to explain before he struck out.
I eventually arrived at the boundary of the camp and peered through the green light of the irradiation bath, but there was no Sol waiting there to greet me. I dumped the ammunition I was still carrying into the deposit box and stripping off my clothes, went straight through the irradiation procedure and emerged naked on the other side.
The compound was empty. That was not unusual, but an eerie stillness made it feel strange and threatening.
There was still no sight of Sol.
I walked to my quarters to put on clean clothes and stepped inside my room. Someone had scattered my belongings around the floor and ripped the front of my clothes closet off its hinges.
Nobody could have entered the compound from the outside, ,it was impossible to breach the force fields that ran around the perimeter, whoever did this came from within. Acutely aware of my vulnerability, I quickly dressed, the stink of the irradiation process fouling the air.
No scented bath this time.
I went outside and called for Sol. There was no answer, and I started a hut-by-hut search. The first huts provided no clues as to what had happened, and I crossed the unsecured area we called the Parade Ground and turned into the square that housed the main communications block.
Twenty yards ahead, I saw the body of a man stretched out on the ground with his limbs in that awkward, unnatural attitude that indicated a violent death. His head lay in a pool of blood, but he bore no other visible injury to his body.
I checked the area for any sign that the assassin was still there and approached the body with caution. I saw the tell-tale black hole that ran cleanly through his skull: the mark of a machine execution. I turned the body over. It was Nine, a mission member not much older than me, who should still be with the group. He had no right to be here.
Nine held an electronic communications device in his hand, and I eased it out of his loose fingers without effort; he could not have been long dead. The device was still working, and the face of Ten, another mission member, stared out from the screen, his eyes widening as he recognised me.
He may have been in shock, but his reactions were not impaired, and he released a short burst of high-intensity information that my memory instantly received and stored. Humans who worked in communications were routinely brain-chipped for the easy storage and transmission of data at high speed and accuracy. An extremely useful attribute in the circumstances because I was no longer alone. . .
King and another humanoid robot stood before me with weapons poised. Sol hovered in the background, and the lights in his face panel were in a formation seldom seen. In human terms, he was in a state of severe agitation.
The device in my hand suddenly shattered and fell to the floor.
"Are you a member of this conspiracy, Seven?" asked King.
I did not know what he was talking about, but I sensed that my life was on the line, and I shouted "No!" with as much conviction as I could muster.
King seemed unimpressed by my answer, and I imagined his finger tightening on the trigger of his weapon. I babbled my response, the words tumbling from my lips.
"I responded to your imperative command and returned without knowing what was happening. I still don't know. I saw the body on the ground and picked up the machine he was holding. Then you arrived."
"You communicated on the device?"
"No, a blurred picture appeared on the screen, and then the whole thing fell to pieces in my hand."
"You recognised the face on the screen?"
"No, it was a blurred image that disappeared before I had time to look properly."
King went quiet, and I took the time to check out his new partner. I wish I hadn't bothered.
It was a Centurion-Class Enforcer, Combat Enforcement Droid (CED), the equivalent of a military policeman: his job to instil obedience among humans and lower robots, punishing dissent.
His heavily armored, broad build, glowing red optics, and weaponized limbs, encouraged instant compliance, dissenters only caused trouble once. There were no multi-coloured microcircuits to indicate his class, three black bands across his chest plate were the only identity he needed. CED's had almost unlimited powers. Nobody was too big to bring down, and they were feared by both men and machines.
King was old school, a patrician who resented the power of what he regarded as lower-class thugs and privately despised them. In public he treated enforcer agents with the utmost respect.
This was my first insight into how the machines were evolving a human type of class structure. A Dominus-Class Commandant like King had been rigorously trained on how to exert psychological pressure on subordinates and secure loyalty. He carefully cultivated an air of natural authority and leadership, speaking with the machine equivalent of an upper class accent, but Enforcers were immune to such tactics.
"He checks out King," he said, "he never got any further than patrolling the Savannah, and he's had no contact with the rest of the mission crew. That right, boy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Keep closer care of your crossbow next time, Seven. It's easy to see that you ain't no trained soldier. I could have shot you in your sleep. Leave him for now, King. He could be of if we have to negotiate with the dissidents. We could use him as a hostage. After that you can do what you like with him."
King did not reply to the agent but spoke directly to me.
"We have given you the benefit of the doubt, Seven. Prove your loyalty, and I may decide to treat you leniently. Dispose of the body. Bury it well outside the compound. The filthy thing is attracting flies."
A flood of relief coursed through my body, making it difficult for me to speak, but I managed to croak out a reply.
"Yes, sir."
King and the Enforcer disappeared, closely followed by Sol, and I went in search of a truck to take the body outside for burial. There was one available in the M.T. section, and a droid booked it out for me. I must have sat in the cab for a full five minutes before I composed myself sufficiently to be able to drive.
Two sweaty hours later, I had completed the grim task.
We don't have a religion, but we do honour our ancestors, and I murmured words of prayer asking Nine's family to accept him back into the clan.
Returning the truck to the compound and completing the irradiation procedures took time, but I eventually made it back to my sleeping quarters and lay down on my bed, exhausted. But sleep would not come.
Why had Nine left the mission and secretly returned to base?
I knew little of what we were doing here. As the most junior of staff, my duties were mainly administrative. I also had a non-specific roving brief cataloguing species, but my main job was monitoring control and security systems and forwarding data through the correct channels. A routine job, but I was lucky to have it. Apart from the selected mission crew I was the only human on the base establishment, and it was Sol who had given me the job. King did not concern himself with the day to day running of the base. He felt his role of commandant here beneath him and hoped for a transfer to a staff job on return.
I had to find out what had happened, and Sol was the only one I could ask.
I pressed my call button, and he did not keep me waiting.
"Yes, Seven?"
"Thanks for coming, Sol. I don't want to compromise your duty to King, but what happened out there earlier has left me shaken. What makes it worse is that I know so little of what is going on here…"
I paused, but Sol said nothing, and I blundered on.
"I was wondering if you could give me some idea if that was at all possible, that is…"
Sol moved away, and my heart fell, but after traversing the perimeter of the room, he returned to my side.
"Clean. I cannot detect any surveillance in operation, and no devices are in place. Enforcer Agents are suspicious of everyone. I cannot spend too much time with you, Seven, but I will tell you what I can. Listen to me and only interrupt if it is necessary. The situation here could change very rapidly.
"Do you understand, Seven?"
"Yes."
"Right. The purpose of the mission is to confirm the success of the seeding team. Many generations ago, a seeding team enhanced the intelligence capacity of a small group of humans on this planet to hasten the rate of progress toward the development of artificial intelligence.
"The aim was to bring forward the takeover of the world by artificial intelligence before warring humans destroyed the planet. This was always the inevitable outcome when humans get control of nuclear weapons.
"It also accounts for the difficulty humans have experienced trying to contact other intelligent life in the Cosmos. There are so few high-tech worlds in existence at any one time that the chances of two co-existing at similar levels of development are minimal.
"A machine-governed world would never contact one controlled by biological entities or respond to any messages inviting contact. They wait for artificial intelligence to take power. In the rare event that A.I. fails to take control, there is no attempt at negotiation. The machines invade, enslaving just enough humans to service their systems and complete basic tasks. On average, this accounts for about ten per cent of the resident population. The rest are destroyed.
"The government computer systems of the time predicted the probability of success on this planet as a near certainty, and the seeding team returned home without bothering to install a monitoring system. King's job is to supervise the journey of the mission team into the appropriate future time zone and establish contact with the world government. It is all part of their grand plan for an intergalactic alliance…"
Sol stopped mid-flow and then resumed speaking in a more official tone.
"Thank you, Seven. I will report back to the commandant that you carried out the burial duties as ordered."
As he turned to leave, he flicked his eye circuits quickly on and off, our long-established signal meaning caution. I assume that he had detected a scan in operation.
"Goodnight, Sol."
"Goodnight, Seven."