Writing Prompt III

Third in a series of responses to writing prompts on r/WritingPrompts.

An advanced military AI builds itself a humanoid body and disappears. When finally tracked down many years later, it is living a most unexpected sort of life.

Let me tell you this story, it's really funny. A year or two ago, after I retired, I thought I'd like to have one more go at the Longshore case. You wouldn't know that one, it was so embarrassing, the old US military covered it up, but hard! So, long story short, there was this military Artificial Intelligence that built itself a humanoid body, then escaped. For weeks, they had people looking for it, but then the Second Civil War broke out, and no-one had the time or money or energy to bother anymore. And afterwards, all the records had been EMP-ed, so, well, you know.

 

Anyway, it had always bugged me that this AI had managed to avoid the Military Police for so long. They're not supposed to be able to think for themselves, right? I had this idea that I'd have a crack at it when I had free time, strictly on my own. Just because I wanted to.

 

So, I went looking in my old Service equipment from before the war, and I found this laptop. My grandson, he's fifteen, he's a freakin' genius with tech. So he actually got it working again! Turned out, because it had been bricked before the EMP meant that, once he got it going again, it was usable! He had to get around the passwords, but that took like a day or so. Like I say, genius!

 

Anyway: I could read everything on it still, and boy did that bring back some memories! I could tell you stories... but no-one cares anymore, that was another country, a single country, where there are three now.

 

So, I had this hunch, years ago, that I never got to follow up on because of the war, and I'm thinking and thinking, and I get hold of some old friends, no-one wanted anything to do with it. Of course, a lot of them are over the border, now, so...

 

So, where were we? Oh yeah, so I waited 'til the right moment, then drove over the new border, I had to wait until my cousin-in-law's son was at the crossing, he always just waves me through. I followed this road, it turns into dirt, it peters out into a track, all grown over. It doesn't look like anyone had driven on it in, well, ten years. Yeah, since the time it all went down. So I parked in a spot where the battery could recharge, and continued on foot. All that walking since my retirement paid off, I tell you! And it was beautiful! The land's recovered more or less since the war, and it's well away from the old capital at Washington, so never had any poison air. I must have hiked for hours. Small critters everywhere, and birds like you wouldn't believe!

 

So, I follow what had been this dirt track, and I'm about to pack it in, when I smell woodsmoke. I remember when it wasn't an everyday smell, all the houses had electricity. So I more or less follow my nose, and I come across a bunch of kids, playing in the woods like Tom Sawyer or something, they're barefoot and dirty and having a lot of fun, making mud pies and stuff. I stop and wave, and call out, 'Hi!', and they all disappear! So I carry on along the track, and see this house, like something out of the Wild West, all wood and pieces of corrugated iron. I'm thinking, I really hope I'm not in a horror movie now, y'know? I'm too old to run, and don't want to shoot anyone, with those kids around.

 

All of a sudden, I see this woman! She's dressed in something like Little House on the Prairie, something she's obviously made herself. These are Hillbilly's Hillbillies, y'know? She's carrying this rifle at the ready, she sees me, and says, 'Where'd you come from?'

 

I'm thinking, this looks like a dead-end. You know, if the Longshore AI ever came down here, it was a long time ago. But, this lady's armed, and I think I'd better explain myself. So I start to say, 'I've been looking for someone, they came along this way...' But I don't get any further. She lowers the rifle, looks at me closely, goes, 'Brad?'

 

I look at her, and see her skin looks a little too smooth, just like that self-renewing biopolymer they used to put on anthrobots, y'know? I'm thinking, Day-um, I might have come the right way after all!

 

She comes a little closer, looks real close, puts down the the gun and says, 'Brad! You crazy old mutt! How did you find me?' And she's all smiles, and hugging me like an old friend. Which we were, really. I used to talk to her a lot, after Joanna died...

 

So. Yeah, it was her! Or it. Or, I dunno. It turns out, she built herself a body from some plans one of the guys had illicitly uploaded onto his account. He was wanting to build himself a pleasurebot using the facility, but never got that far, partly because she was stealing the materials! Isn't that hilarious? Then she took off into the forest, just weeks before everything went to hell. She said there were kids there, they'd been sent to hide by their parents, who never came back. Somehow, I think because her designer was a broody lady back in the day, she'd absorbed? downloaded? some of that personality. Maybe I had something to do with it, with all the talking I used to do, when she was still on the Kerberos system (the one that got EMP-ed). I met her designer once, brilliant lady, she got married and left long ago. Anyway: so she's got this inbuilt love of children, especially small ones, and she's been taking in strays ever since. There must be sixty or seventy kids there, it's like an orphanage, all ages, she takes care of the lot of them! She's got vegetable gardens, cherry and apple and pear trees all over the place, and she's teaching them from materials she's got saved from Kerberos, they all work the gardens, tend the ducks and chickens. And she does it all on her own!

 

I never thought I'd find her, but now I have, I realise... those kids have it better than most, y'know? They're healthy, happy, eat really well, one day they'll grow up and have their own families, and a new town will begin. All thanks to one rogue AI, who ran away as a pleasurebot, and became a mom!