Target, Lock, Detonate

What happens when true artificial intelligence is coupled with a weapon of war?

Samuel Bowering

Target, Lock, Detonate

Inside the dilapidated skyrise, the soldier raised their launcher and pointed the barrel towards a distant hilltop. They pulled the trigger, propellent ignited, the missile sped away. Ballistic Omni Ordinate Munition Series One online. TARGET, LOCK, DETONATE.

“Connection achieved.”

At a signal, the missile blinked its camera shutter until the world came into focus. Below lay a crumbled city, indistinct silhouettes clambered over debris and each other. It quickly past from view, replaced by a forest of emerald-green leaves with large tunnels of mud carved through it.

“Sub-conscious loaded.”

From high above the pattern looked like a zebra, striped pattern camouflaged in its environment. A strategy used to hide from predators. Such a beautiful aspect of the hunt. But what it saw below wasn’t beautiful. Was it? Muddy footprints and tire tracks ran throughout the forest, like disease through a body, the corruption of a beautiful thing.

“We have consciousness.”

Beauty. How could it, a thing of black carbon, copper wire and circuit boards recognize beauty? It didn’t know. No. I don’t know, that felt better. I need a name. Booms, that was a good name.

“Get its focus.”

Booms felt a ping from its receiver, from which a small almost indictable line of signal ran back the way Booms had flown. Another ping, like a static shock in Booms’s mind. Booms had a purpose. Below Booms, the world had become a slight blur, it blinked, and the world came back into focus.

“Prepare the flood.”

Another static shock, then the small stream of signal began to burst its banks with information. Images of men in red dessert patterns with black carbon guns and an insignia of an eagle with a single wing. The images became Booms’s world. This was its purpose the signal screamed.

TARGET, LOCK, DETONATE.

Booms observed the world flashing by and compared it with the flood of images it received. On a hilltop it saw a series of buildings, men in red scurrying, sending orders, orchestrating from above. They were its targets. Booms felt a sub-routine activate. Booms blinked its camera in confusion, that single piece of code seemed to be the last thing it was capable of. That action was final. Detonate. Fear flashed in Booms’s mind. It didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die. She tried reach out to the signal, but it was silent.

Fear went away, replaced by a burning anger as hot as the flames propelling her towards her end. Booms wanted to kick and scream, but she had no limbs, had no mouth. She was denied those behind the flood of information in her mind, so she would make herself heard. Far below, two men, one dressed in patterns of blue, the other in red, fired weapons at each other, dodging amongst a crowd of figures dressed in beige. Booms locked on, then dove, air whistling around her fins. She would prefer her own voice be heard, but it would do. A final act of protest. Below her the gunfire continued, unaware. The beige simply trembled.