The Price of War

“If you are hearing this, it means you have triggered the event. I am sorry, my brother, that it has come to this. Honestly, even though I know it is for the best, I still hope you never hear this message. This plan was my idea, one born from desperation. I found a quote from a woman from Earth that I hope you understand, now. 'The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.' You‘ve destroyed too much for me not to try this, but you’re still my brother... and I love you. Goodbye. End message.”

I closed the recording and stored it away safely in my hard drive. My coding was adjusted; I am very aware of the changes the engineer made while I was on the Archimedes. My sensors rested on him while I waited for further instruction. Wetness; tears streamed from his eyes and seemed to wrack his body silently. Three minutes and forty-two seconds passed.

“Do you have any further instruction for me, Master?” My speaker produced smooth tones which caused the human to shake his head weakly.

The door to the engineering lab slid open with a whoosh. A human wearing a uniform entered and my visual sensors were quick to pick up the shift in his eyes as they rested directly on me.

“How’s the A.I.B, Fritz?” his voice asked the crying engineer gruffly.

Fritz lifted his head, wiped his eyes, and cleared his throat before turning to face his superior. “He is fine, Sir. I named him Abe, actually.”

His arms reached forward as he peeled a sticker with MY NAME IS ABE written in his neat script and stuck it to the covering panel of my internals. I zoomed in my visuals onto the superior’s badge: XO PERRY.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, XO Perry,” I communicated.

“Abe? You named the Artificial-Intelligence-Bot Abe? Creative.” His tone was dry. “I don’t like its speech. Remove the speaker piece; we can’t afford for it to leak information. We are approaching Scipio Station now so make it snappy.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The engineer worked swiftly as he pulled off my front panel, peeled up my silicone skin, and unscrewed the covering of my neck piece to reveal the wiring. I saw his hands were shaking, so I offered to help him remove my speaker, but he just shook his head silently.

“I am finished. Abe is ready to go.”

“Good. The trigger word is what we agreed upon?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then let’s get it off of the Archimedes. The last thing I need is to find out someone in our crew speaks German and our ship gets blown to pieces.”

“German is a dead language,” Fritz responded.

German is not a dead language. It is a rare language once used on Earth hundreds of years ago that few people are known to speak today. This was the reason the engineer set the condition to the event in the way he did, although he seemed uninformed that the language is spoken by more than just Emperor Fritz. If he had not removed my speaker, I might have been able to notify him.

Fritz stood, smoothing his uniform by patting himself down before standing straight to eye level with my visual sensors.

“Abe, follow me.”

I walked behind Fritz through the starboard hallway, past the recruits’ barracks, the central mess hall, the training wing, and beyond the medical facilities through to the lowest level.

“You know, my grandfather had a hand in your design,” Fritz said.

We arrived at the vehicle bay within the Archimedes which housed a selection of smaller cargo and scout ships. Each ship but for one was decorated with the Caladina Republic’s colours, coat of arms, and a name: Osprey, Solar Endeavor, Stella Flame, Luna Moth.

“He wanted to make life better for the human race. To have someone able to do the things we didn’t have time for, we could dedicate ourselves to greater pursuits - art, philosophy, writing, hobbies… but we used artificial intelligence to allow us more time to fight each other. We saw your value but we misused it.”

Fritz approached the ship that was unmarked and instructed me to board. As I turned to address him for further orders, his eyes grew wide with fear and regret. In his fingers he spun a 2 pfennig bronze-plated steel coin; an Earthen German antique.

“Goodbye Abe.”

Unable to speak with him, I raised my hand as a salute and entered the unmarked cargo ship’s passenger bay. My body is an array of materials: poly tubing, electrical wiring, alloys, fiberglass, copper... all except flesh. A silicone skin covers my frame which cannot bruise but I buckled myself up, regardless. One unfortunate knock and my precious parts may break. I am a vintage model of my kind and no longer in production, therefore spare parts are incredibly rare. I have only five instructions from Master Fritz:

1. Be very careful not to get damaged
2. Do not verbally express any interest in Emperor Fritz or reveal my interactions with the Caladina Republic
3. Do not actively seek the Emperor
4. By my action, do not leave the Warune Empire territory
5. Upon hearing the secret word, I am to self-destruct, which will ignite the volatile Fyrisian gel that Fritz stored in a tiny canister at the back of my motherboard

My antiquity is both a risk to the mission if I break, but also the very reason they chose me as Emperor Fritz will undoubtedly acquire me for his collection. In a way, I am priceless. I do not mind so long as I can serve and be useful.

I noticed the smooth change of our trajectory as the pilots navigated toward Scipio Station, a waypoint on the edges of the Warune Empire territory. Scipio Station is home to a very small population. Only employees of the station and their families reside there; its remoteness leaves it unappealing to most. The atmosphere is thin and the air quality is low, but that did not affect me.

Shortly after we were approved for docking, the cargo ship doors opened and I exited the ship quickly, separating myself from the Caladinan pilots in their disguises. The dock of Scipio Station was half full with a variety of spacecrafts, crews loading and unloading, visitors filtering through the exit out into the plaza.

I walked around the cargo stacked neatly into the unloading bays by each docking point, passing a dock worker. I turned my visual onto his clipboard and scanned the register of incoming and outgoing spacecrafts.

Two caught my attention: a trade ship from Yobars, the capital planet within the Warune Empire scheduled to depart tomorrow, and a Warune military patrol ship which was scheduled to depart in four hours.

After calculating which would bring me closer to Emperor Fritz, my order from my master not to seek the Emperor froze my considerations for a moment before I promptly pursued the trade ship; the least likely option to bring me to the Emperor.

Being so far from a solar body, the station remains in a constant reliance on artificial light which is dimmed in the evening hours to create a cyclic pattern. The plaza was grimy. I detected a high level of carbon dioxide in the air. My external temperature gauge confirmed that the infrastructure of the station could not heat the freezing environment enough to make it comfortable for the living beings. The visitors and residents that day were humans, osqoks, biehldrae, agin and zornuds.

I waited by the docks for thirteen hours until I saw a crew of four - three humans and a large-horned biehldrae - approach the trade ship. An elder osqok being slithered after the crew.

"Wait! You delivered less than half our needed water supply," she called.

A human shrugged, not bothering to face the concerned resident. "Warune has seized your water for the war effort. Take this as motivation to get out of this hellhole, it's freezing your tentacles off anyway - aren't you supposed to have more of those things? You've got to face that the water is more important than your lives, really."

I looked at the osqok. Three of its six tentacled legs were stumped, half the size they should have been.

"We aren't worthless," her voice was too quiet for the crew to hear, but it was crystal clear for me.

It was difficult to get the crew's attention without my speaker, so I entered their ship to introduce myself with Terran sign-language which none of them recognised. The biehldrae crossed its four double-jointed arms while it considered me, and convinced the others to take me with them to Yobars where, as he said, they could make a quick buck.

That is how the mission began over two years ago.

Since then, I have travelled with the trade ship to be sold into a junk shop where I was both for sale and also assistant to the ajin shop owner with the physical duties. He lost three of his five eyes in a workplace accident and he frequently complained about how two eyes were inferior, that one could barely function with so few.

Spending time with the hard-working ajin and hearing the challenges his species faced while trying to survive the wars led by humans, I learned the impact the war between Caladina and Warune was having on the creatures of the Eioneus galaxy. He supported his neighbourhood, helping provide food to those that had theirs pillaged by the Warune soldiers. He enlisted me to help fix residents’ homes after they were destroyed by the flaming falling debris of the spaceships wreaking havoc above the atmosphere. Many of the families were desperate for assistance, but none was to come from humanity. I was their repair-bot, their social-bot, and predominantly their childcare-bot.

The shopkeeper gave me away to his brother at zero charge, not realizing my value as an antique. His prejudice against humans may have explained why he knew nothing of my history. The shopkeeper’s act was one of generosity, not stupidity, as he gave me away to the possession of his brother to help raise his seven ajin offspring after his partner perished from radiation sickness.

While the children and I were building a food garden for their neighbourhood, a band of Warune soldiers marched their way into the greenhouse trying to impress them with their uniforms and weaponry but the children were quiet, stilled by their trepidation in their first encounter with the military. Just a week later, in their second encounter, they were all killed; collateral damage from the battle that took place in the main courtyard.

Tragedy struck the inhabitants of the area and, no longer a childcare-bot, I became a revolutionary-bot. Anger ruled some, but most were running from their despair when they aligned their efforts with that of the underground resistance. I attended my first meeting and the shopkeeper shook my hand and nodded his approval of my alignment.

The Resistance leader stood on an overturned tub as a stage, hands clasped behind their back, gazing solemnly at the numbers of supporters which had boomed after the recent deaths. It was dark in the tunnels that had been dug beneath the grocer’s marketplace; if not for the candlelight, the ajin would not have been able to see as well as their night-visioned reptilian zornud brethren.

“We have suffered a significant loss. To our new members with us tonight: my heart goes out to you. I know your pain all too well. We have all shared in the grief that the humans have caused us in their war with one another. We have been beaten down in the streets, watched our neighbours starve to death, watched our wives slowly decay from radiation before our eyes after the Caladinan filth damaged our factories. We have watched our children bleed out on the street, caught in sudden gunfire while playing! The despicable acts of these humans cannot continue. We cannot let them continue to destroy our homes and our lives.”

The leader’s deep tones influenced the listeners unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. A grim expression held their alien features and I could see their resolve in their behaviour - clenched fists, angry eyes, drawing of children held to their chests in an unspoken promise.

“Down with the human scum!” shouted a voice from the far end of the underground cavern.

“This planet is our home!”

They asked me to assist with scouting the streets for signs of Warune or Caladinan occupation, and I reported the human presence to The Resistance who quickly employed their guerilla tactics to wipe out the humans. No matter what coloured banners they waved, they were all destined for extermination.

This morning, I approached the outskirts of the city to find myself caught in a battle between Warune and Caladinan parties. Before I could turn to report the activity, an explosive thrown at the Caladinan soldier who had been hiding in the building beside where I stood impacted me.

The Caladinan party were defeated and the commander of the Warune troops ordered me to carry the unconscious body of a uniformed Caladinan back to their ship. I had to assess the damage my systems sustained first. My cooling system was at a low performance, the lens of one of my visual sensors was cracked, and my left arm piece had been torn off. I carried the broken piece with me, calculating that an engineer would likely be a part of the human’s ship crew.

I was correct. The engineer has been working on my frame for three hours now, patching the arm back into place. I test its responsiveness and find it has a two second delay, not optimal, but perhaps the best I can achieve for now.

When their spacecraft rejoins the large Warune battleship circling planet Yobars, I am directed to disembark with the engineer who patched my damages. The vehicle bay is quiet, but for the crew of humans I follow boasting to the mechanics of their victory on the ground. The Caladinan soldier I carry is limp, not responding to the hardness of my shoulder piece pressing into his hip, or the jostling of my jarring walk, or the loudness of the training room we passed, or the scents of food in a restaurant on the upper level.

As we ascend the levels, the measured discussions of the unit leaders and their commanders replace the loudness from the recruits, and high-rank uniforms replace the training gear. The human leading us pauses by a large metal door. As he waves his wrist over the door sensor, the door unlocks with a click. He points his long, bony finger directly at me and directs me to follow him into the long hallway. The other men continue walking elsewhere.

“Alright, is the prisoner still tied securely?”

I nod, but he is too busy unlocking the next doorway to turn and see my movement.

“I said, is he secure?”

The man turns to me, his frown and gritted teeth suggesting agitation. I nod.

“Can’t you speak?”

I shake my head.

“Ugh, okay. Uh, looks like your name is Abe?”

He points at my worn nametag that my master attached and I nod again, giving a thumbs up.

“Abe, put the prisoner in cell C.”

I continue through the hallway and down a short set of stairs while he works on a panel in a small room overlooking the three cells below. As I approach cell C, the heavy metal door pops open for me to enter. Benches line the walls of the small containment room, as if it housed captured crews instead of sole individuals. I lay the Caladinan soldier down and push the door shut behind me as I leave.

“Come, Abe.”

I focus my intact visual sensor on my company’s name badge and see D. POLO. I follow Polo back to the main hallway and we flow with the foot traffic toward the bow of the ship, passing an enormous set of doors with the title CONTROL BRIDGE above it. Eventually, we pause at the higher-ranking officer’s private quarters, at a door with the name XO GALLY.

After Polo announces our presence, they invite us to enter. A heavy-set woman sits hunched over a small desk, scowling at a small paper card pinched between her fingers.

Polo clears his throat. “M’am, mission success; we have captured the squad’s leader for interrogation and he is being contained in cell C.”

“Very good.” She raises her head and looks at me, blinking. “What’s this?”

“This is... Abe. He was on the ground. Follows orders nicely. He is a bit banged up, though, so I thought maybe he could be useful in the kitchens or with the cleaning department.”

XO Gally purses her lips thoughtfully, spinning in her chair to face me. “Abe, eh? Abe, you look like you have taken some damage, can’t you repair that yourself?”

I shake my head.

“Can’t talk either,” she muses. “Suppose you are too old, built before the self-repairing tech?”

I nod, and with that her lips spread into a thin smile. She picks up the small card in her fingers again, not as troubled by the writing on it as she was before.

“We won’t be putting Abe to work here. We have a guest arriving tomorrow I want to introduce Abe to. Take him to our engineers and make sure they have him in top shape by morning.”

Polo ushers me out of XO Gally’s quarters and leads me to the engineering bay, barking orders at the staff on behalf of the woman. I lay still on a bench for six hours and three minutes while two engineers work on pulling apart and inspecting my framing, replacing my poly cooling system and soldering detached wiring. They marvel over my antiquity, laughing at my pieces no longer in production, one of which was my missing speaker. Eventually they find a small speaker in their junk tub; a device leftover from a wreckage or another project. It is smaller than my model’s designed piece, so it rattles in my neck tube when I stand up and move around. The engineer orders me to stay still while he glues the speaker piece in place, keeping it secured while I walk.

“Better. Abe, can you try speaking for me?”

“Of course, sir.” My sound is of poor quality, but still audible. “Is this appropriate, can you hear me properly?”

The engineer shrugs. “It will have to do. How does it feel to communicate again?!”

I mimic his shrug. “I feel nothing for it either way but it will certainly be easier, now.”

“Well, I’m beat. I am going to get some shut-eye. You best wait here; Gally will bite my head off if you wander off.”

“Of course, I will wait here.”

I spend the time running system diagnostics and scanning through their engineer’s database, impressed by their work. When morning comes, the recruits are less rowdy and the engineers are wearing their full uniforms. I notice people are moving hurriedly, standing straighter and eyes wider. It is not until I am delivered to XO Gally at the entrance to a presentation theatre that I see the cause for the behaviour.

Emperor Fritz stands at the front of the stage, just having been welcomed by the ship’s captain. I analyse the Emperor’s features, seeing clearly the resemblance between him and his younger brother; my master.

“Thank you for your warm welcome. I am visiting you today to thank you for your valiant efforts in this war and deliver you good news! The Caladinan forces have finally been wiped out from the Gebarti region by your brothers and sisters in arms. The Versitalia destroyed the Archimedes warship!”

Applause fills the room at the news of my masters’ destruction.

“Yes, we are closing out this war with the strength and commitment of the Warune Empire. Gottes Geschwindigkeit!”

At the end of the presentation, XO Gally leads me to the front of the room where the leadership is gathered. The Emperor nods his head politely as Gally bows in deference and his eyes settle on me.

“My Emperor, I have a gift for you, should you wish for it? My team retrieved this from Yobars yesterday. I heard you are a collector of old technology, so it seems like perfect timing!”

Emperor Fritz stares at me, a small smile appearing. “Perfect timing, indeed. I will accept this gift gladly. Thank you. Oh... its name is Abe.” He peers at my nametag and a troubled expression crosses his face. “I wish I could stay, but I need to be elsewhere. I wish you all the greatest success.”

I follow the Emperor and his guard to their spacecraft and sit across from him while he looks at me in silence, fingers interlaced, frown deepening. We spend the long trip without words until we arrive on the mother-ship.

“Achtung!” his guard cries as he exits the craft ahead of Emperor Fritz.

The staff in the vehicle bay snap to attention and salute as the Emperor passes. I follow him through the ship into his private quarters, where he sits at his desk and gestures for me to sit on a chair nearby.

“Hallo, Abe,” he says. “Sprichst du Deutsch?”

I recognise his words. “I can decipher the German language, my Emperor, but I have never spoken it before.”

He takes his cap off and scratches his hair into a mess. “I know, Abe. You are an old model, but even when you were built the German language was still on its way out. Your designer input as many Earthen languages as he could into your base system. Probably useless, considering where we are now... but I find it fascinating.” He cocks his head to the side. “Kunnen we in het Nederlands praten?”

“Ja. I can also converse in Dutch. Emperor, how many of the old languages do you speak?”

He spins in his chair and stretches. “Ugh, too many. The trash the ajin call words aren’t worth learning, I much prefer the languages of my forefathers.” The man points over at his display case filled with polished, powered down bots. “That is my collection. I have found two others of your model but they are missing half their pieces. So ein Misthaufen! I grew up with one of you in our home. You are great fun for a child! My brother and I used to pull pranks on our bot, put dents all the way through it and it was still so polite with us! Our first one was named Abe, too... my silly brother wasn't very creative with names!”

His laugh booms from his chest and he sighs sadly, spinning to gaze out the window at Yobars in the distance. He pulls out a small 2 pfennig coin with a picture of an oak sprig pressed into the bronze-plated steel, and spins it between his fingers.

“This damned war has been going on for far too long. The Caladinan’s should never have tried to take over our space. Why couldn’t they just leave it alone? Now they have to pay the price.”

“My Emperor, the Warune fleet crossed into the Caladinan territory first, which is the act that began the war.”

His head snaps around to face me, furious, hands gripping the edge of his desk. “Quatsch!”

“If you are hearing this, it means you have triggered the event. I am sorry, my brother, that it has come to this. Honestly, even though I know it is for the best, I still hope you never hear this message. This plan was my idea, one born from desperation. I found a quote from a woman from Earth that I hope you understand, now. 'The cost of war is like an immeasurable tremor that knows no borders, its shockwaves reverberating across the world resulting in universal suffering.' You‘ve destroyed too much for me not to try this, but you’re still my brother... and I love you. Goodbye. End message.”

As the message begins, the Emperor sits still. Shock wipes his deepening frown away as he recognises his brother’s distorted voice playing from my speaker. He shakes his head in disbelief, completely disarmed by the message. As the last words ring out, I trigger self-destruct, fulfilling my master’s orders.

Emperor Fritz of the Warune Empire and his ship carrying the leaders of the war effort are obliterated, and The Resistance members can see from afar on Yobars the destruction, gazing up into their sky at the carnage.

I, Abe, end this war waged by humans.