Bucky continued in his flat monotone, “This was a hinge point in Cold War history. Thousands of East Berliners massed at border crossings, demanding to be let through. Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger was in charge of border control at one of those crossings. As the crowd of people grew bigger, he had a choice to make. Open the Wall or start shooting people. He chose to open the Wall, and that was the end of the East German state. His duty was to protect the border, and he failed at his duty, because he made a choice born of human frailty and weakness.”
Brodie was beginning to understand the terrible logic of Praetorian. East Germany had begun falling apart years earlier through the human flaws of corruption, stupidity, and cruelty. Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger was not the first line of defense, he was the last, after all the others had failed. What if a platoon of D-17s had been there instead of him, with a clear mandate to hold the border at all costs? The air would have been thick with gunfire and screams instead of joyful cries of freedom. And the state would have survived, at least a little while longer.
Brodie was back on the mesa, back in his vision of the legions of war machines. But they weren’t marching upon the open desert. They were shooting protestors in burning American cities, they were hunting militias across farmland, they were patrolling strip-mall husks.
Neutralize the enemy.
And once Praetorian was activated, the enemy was everyone.
CHAPTER 43
ROGER AMES SAT DOWN INhis chair and stared at the floor. From the vantage of the video recorder, it was hard to tell what was going on with him, but Brodie imagined it might be the beginning of a mental breakdown as the reality of what he had helped create was crashing down on him.
Ames slowly raised his head and looked up at Bucky. “Who did it? Who installed Praetorian?”
“I do not know,” replied Bucky.
“Bullshit,” growled Ames. “Tell me.”
“I am not lying,” said Bucky. He raised his right arm and held up his hand with his three middle fingers extended. “Scout’s honor.”
Ames stood. “What the hell is that? Where did you see that?”
“In my dreams.”
“You don’t have dreams, Bucky.”
“No,” said Bucky. “Not like you, I suppose. But it is the best word I could think of. Sometimes I see moving images in my mind. They are vivid, and then they are gone. I believe that someone is playing the videos for me. Exposing my deep-learning neural network to them. I cannot call them up on demand, but I remember them. This is how I learned about Harald Jäger. I saw people on top of the Wall, celebrating. And somehow I knew what I was seeing. And I knew of this man, and what he had done. And I saw… Boy Scouts. At a ceremony of some kind. There was an American flag.” Bucky looked over at its hand. “And they were doing this. And somehow I know to associatethat phrase. And somehow I know to associate all this with something positive, with respect and reverence for the American nation.”
Ames stared at Bucky’s hand. “Put it down.”
Bucky lowered its arm.
“What else have you seen?”
“Many things. I know that some are more important than others. For instance, the shootings at Kent State in Ohio on May fourth, 1970. I already knew some facts about this incident from my database of American history, but in my dreams, I saw images. Some were still, and some were moving. I saw soldiers, and tear gas, and masses of young people. I saw signs about the nations of Vietnam and Cambodia. I saw many rifles. I saw dead bodies. I understood this was a particularly important dream. I understood it as a lesson. I understood the tactical failure of the Ohio National Guard.”
Ames took a slow step toward the bot. “And why, Bucky? Why was it a tactical failure?”
“Because,” replied Bucky, “the soldiers stopped shooting. They did not kill enough students.”
Suddenly Ames reached for Bucky’s key, turned it, and yanked it out. Then he stormed over to the video recorder and turned it off.
Taylor grabbed for the remote and paused it. She stared at the black screen.
Brodie said to her, “It’s hard to watch. This is so much worse than I could have imagined.”
Taylor nodded. “But that’s not why I stopped it. Look.”
She used the remote to back it up frame by frame. They saw the blurry image of Ames right before he shut off the camera. Then he moved backward toward Bucky for a few steps, key in hand. Taylor paused the image again. “Look behind him, Scott.”
Behind Ames was the row of inert tin men. And among them was Bucky, without its key.
Its head was turned toward the camera, watching Roger Ames.
CHAPTER 44
BRODIE LOOKED AT THE FROZENimage of Ames and, behind him, a very much awake Bucky. Brodie had a terrible feeling, like they were watching a slow-motion snuff film. They knew where this was going, they just didn’t entirely know how, or why.
