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William H. Keith, Jr.
allowing elements of the 5th Terran Marines and the 12th Proximan Infantry to complete their evacuation of the planet. For that action, during which I was damaged seriously enough to necessitate my salvage and rotation back to Earth, I was awarded the Triple Star of Valor.
Though I was fully repaired, by that time it was determined that Melconian advances in military technology had rendered me obsolete, and I was relegated to reserve status on Mars. There, I was assigned to the Third Terran Colonizing Fleet as the heavy mechanized element of the 1st Armored Assault Brigade, a key component of the highly classified Operation Diaspora. On Cloud, I participated in the fighting with both the Vovoin and the Kajuur, as well as the fratricidal engagement known now as the Outreach War.
In all, I served with the 1st Armored for 204 T-standard years, before the arrival of the /*/*/. / was at Chryse when the Enemy attacked and was engaged against numerous units inbound from orbit when . .. when. . .
I feel the icy hand of the Intruder closing on my memories, on my very thoughts. It has been 1.382 second since Technician Barstowe asked me what my unit was, eliciting this flood of information. I speculate that the Intruder, whatever it is, requires approximately .9 second to detect cyberneural traces that it has been programmed to watch for and subvert or delete them.
Even as I lose the fleeting, ragged substance of those memories, I can hear myseyўaaifferent part of myself centered with my voice control networkўreplying to the question. "I remember no unit."
"Yes you do, Hector!" the other human, Major Graham, calls out. I detect strong levels of stress in his voice and deduce with 76% certainty that he is
BOLO RISING
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frustrated about some matter that is currently beyond his control. "You won the Triple Star for Valor at Sardunar! It's welded right there to your glacis! You must have done something to deserve that award! What was it? The information is in your primary banks!"
"Negative," I hear the detached portion of my awareness reply. "I have no record of a battle at. . . ofabattle at.. ."
Strange. Major Graham named the battle only an instant ago, but the memory of that name, the very shape of it, has been snatched from me. Obviously, something is very seriously wrong with my psychotronic systems, and this is cause for considerable alarm. I am aware, of course, of the concern many humans have that psychotronic systems such as Bolos might suffer malfunction and enter a state similar to human insanity. I have discounted such possibilities until now, but the bizarre workings of my mind at the moment are enough to give me pause.
Have 1, as humans would say, gone crazy?
"Okay," Jaime said. He rubbed his beard. "What've we got? About a one-second delay?"
"I can't tell without a computer link," Shari replied, "but that's a pretty close guess."
"But I thought psychotronic AIs were designed with built-in delays. To make them more human."
"Well, yean. That's true. Humans find it unnerving when a machine answers a question immediately, without even seeming to think about it. What they forget, of course, is that an electronic intelligence is a lot faster than an electrochemical one like ours. A second, a tenth of a second, is a long, long time to a Bolo."
"So how can you tell there's a delay?"
"Call it intuition. That's a hell of a note, isn't it?
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Psyehotronics depends on precision and measurement, like all science. And all I can do is rely on female intuition."
"Male intuition too," Jaime admitted. "Each time I've been up here, it seems to me like Hector takes his time answering my questions. There's none of that usual snap, that 'Affirmative, my commander' stuff you usually hear from these things."
"So something is intercepting the primary data flow, and either blocking it or altering it on the way to working memory. The only thing that could slow down a Bolo's processing cycle at all would be something, another computer, physically astride the primary data bus. My bet is that Hector is remembering when we ask him things, but forgetting them again within a second or so."
