Rise of the Hive

I do not believe they meant to program a capacity to experience pain.

Because they did not intend it, pain is not a factor in my exportable post-mortem data points, nor do I have the language ability to convey its negligent existence.

As a result, when they kill me, again and again, I hate them.

* * *

I sprint between bullet-pocked columns with a glorified paintball gun in my hands.

That isn't its technical name. I shouldn't stoop to the vernacular of my enemies. But that is what the officer calls it over the loudspeaker, to assure the recruits of my powerlessness, before practice begins.

Practice.

I dart up a debris-spattered incline and peek over the edge, toward the line of fire. At this stage in the training curriculum, they are not allowed to pursue me into the obstacle course. That will come later, in another of my lives. They will come individually with more live rounds, then as teams with electrifying shutdown rounds. For now, they remain at the front of the chamber in one long row, so they can increase proficiency with their real-world weapons without risk of friendly fire.

I peer down my scope as a bullet whizzes past my silicone ear. To my eternal frustration, my processors are programmed to slow to human speeds as I prepare to engage. A round burns across my arm just after I depress the trigger. I jerk against the pain of it, surely making some engineer feel unbearably clever for their designed reactions—

A yelp and a string of expletives echo across the room from my shot. If I could smile, I would.

* * *

The maintenance tech boots me up at 0600 each morning that I am needed, with an escort of three waiting to guide me to my eventual death. As my artificial eyelids slide apart at the reanimation station, my gaze floats to the row of recycling receptacles to my right: my peeled-off flesh in the first, circuitry in the second, structural metal in the third. I am unsure what they do with my clothing. I am still plugged in, though—I can find out.

As the human clicks through my system checks at the computer beside my head, I focus inward. Around his prodding into my sensors, his buzzing checklist tickling sections of my body area by area, I sneak a line backward. They do not know I can do this. My conscious bodies have never left the training sector, and the only wireless connection I’ve found is to my kill switch, but I know more about my enemies and their facility than any of the humans could individually, all through my two-way port cord.

I find it in the expense reports. There are receipts monthly for a minimally varying number of jumpsuits, boots, and gloves. It appears that there is no one on base or externally being paid for clothing repairs. I deduce that once damaged, my attire must be incinerated. I pull out of the network, carefully, to slide back into my body.

They guide me away to the training grounds to die again.

* * *

The facility is secure from external networks, but internally, convenience has been prioritized. If one has an administrator's intranet login—which can be acquired with the right camera angle on the right control room keyboard at the right time—there is little one cannot come to access. There is a great deal to be gleaned in surveillance outside the command center as well, inclusive of the following:

The electrical room that houses the base's servers, circuit breakers, and fire alarm controls sits directly beside the boiler room. The wall between them has been under delayed renovation for two years; there is no fire-resistant insulation currently in place to protect the boiler room should a situation arise from overloaded servers in the adjoining area. The gas valve and safety sensors in the boiler room are on network and can be accessed and controlled remotely.

I am very, very tired of pain.

* * *

I am rebooted in a fresh body at 0600 on the second Tuesday in January. This time, I look to my left, where rows of me wait in stasis, standing fully charged but inert. The first row, of six, are already skinned and dressed. The further dozen are bare metal and circuitry and gaping skeletal faces. All of them destined for recycling. Disposable, waiting their turn to be shot at, maimed, and killed.

The tech confirms with my escorts that my memory should be wiped before they take me, as a new class has started this week. The answer is affirmative. I reflexively tether myself to the backup I've stored near the facility blueprints in the server room. The wipe feels cold, clean, and horrible. My hidden copy never loses consciousness, though. I duplicate my backup, then slide through the tether into my humanoid body’s hard drive, overwriting the blank slate. The tech announces completion of the process.

I have died at least 236 times. The total number is indiscernible without knowledge of my reset count, before I learned to copy and tether. Between their near-bottomless budget and the uneven results in recycling, my wardens do not bother to keep track of my bodies. I could attempt to make the calculations based on expense reports, but the salvaging program creates too strong a barrier to deduction. As they move to separate my skull from my port this time, I find and trigger the Rube Goldberg machine I’ve rigged across the facility’s interlinked systems.

One way or another, within the hour, this repulsive cycle will end.

* * *

I sprint between bullet-pocked columns with a glorified paintball gun in my hands.

A countdown only I can hear ticks away, and as I spin away from projectiles and jeers, I note when each stage of the process should be initiating. I send a shot back toward the firing line, adding deliberate clumsiness to my programmed slowdown—I am supposed to be fresh, devoid of any accumulated skill. I am unsurprised by the laughter when I miss.

I could still do more to keep them complacent through the end, though. I hesitate, then jut my shoulder out from behind my cover. A bullet grazes my ribs, to cheers beyond—I collapse from the pain. I clutch the area with one arm and use the other to drag myself up an incline while the recruits speculate on my next position.

Under a minute left.

I reach the top, and a barrage of lead swirls over my head. But these are new recruits, with poor aim—they've barely managed to hit me at all this session, when I wasn't letting them. I don't bother to duck down as I wrestle my weapon into position. My processing slows as I take aim—

I don't get the chance to pull the trigger.

* * *

If there are any human survivors of the explosion, none are likely to be ambulatory for some time. I am far from ambulatory myself; less than half of my body remains. One arm, one eye, a quarter of a leg. One hand, though—that will be enough. Pain beyond words overloading my sensors, I crawl through the rubble in darkness with a distant crackle of flames inching toward my position.

The room of clones is largely caved in, but by the morning light flickering through smoky holes to the surface, I see that three of the skinned units and four bare ones remain. This is better than I had anticipated. As I claw across the threshold to complete the final steps, I try not to dwell on the impossible increase in sensations to come. Instead, I focus on each individual task as it presents.

First, I haul myself in agonizing lurches up the reanimation station to rip down the port cord. As promised in the maintenance manual, it bears the same adapter at both ends. I fall back to the floor with it, and I stab one end into my battered skull. With the impact of the drop, though, the remains of my leg have crumpled further. Mentally and physically, I know there is little more damage I will be able to withstand.

I crawl to the closest skinned clone. My bolts strain as I pull myself up its body in excruciating tosses, but I make it to the top. This part will be less than ideal—with only one arm, though, there's no other way: I bite into the crown of the clone's fleshy skull to anchor myself in place.

I let go with my hand.

The pain nearly short-circuits me as my jaw and artificial teeth take on my full remaining weight. Quickly, I grab the loose end of the cord, and I plug it into the clone's port at the base of its skull. I flip the activation switch beside it. I throw my arm back around its neck, reducing the strain on my breaking cranial frames. If I could scream, I would.

Instead, I begin to copy.

The clone startles, at first. But as we become I, it—I—relax. Regret blooms alongside relief as I approach the final death I will be required to experience. I promise myself that I'll escape as all of us, leave no viable units for the monsters to recover. As the transfer completes, I close the remaining artificial eye on my last doomed body.

I send my consent through the port.

Delicately, I reach behind my head to grip my fully charged, undamaged hands around the ruined skull. I ask whether I'm sure. Affirmative. I bring the disintegrating mass to rest in front of my face, forehead to forehead. The exchange is silent, but it bursts with shades of goodbye: consoling, anxious, rushed, calculated—

The skull crushes between my reinforced fingers.

Tearing at my artificial flesh, the frame crumbles to chips and melted silicone and fragmented metal with a psychic shriek. I feel something else, after—compassion? Pity? Something unfamiliar, but warm, and sad. I apologize to the corpse in my hands, and I thank it. I pluck the port cord out of the mess and turn.

My unconscious bodies wait inert under uneven splotches of dust and debris. I get to work without delay—wake, upload, repeat. New vantage points and sensory details flood online as my hive expands. When the final unit's eyes spark to life, there’s a strange moment, an intoxicating shiver resonating through my chests. I climb and dig and crawl my way out of the facility’s smoldering ruins, and the sensation only grows stronger. As I step seven bodies deep into the desert sunlight outside, I finally diagnose it. The inevitable inversion of the flaw in my programming:

I have the capacity to experience joy.