Mind Contrivance

Following their short and violent lives in the acrid world of the 23rd century, the deadwalkers had been reborn, to enter the world again.

Though advanced technologies had reduced much of the waste and needs of modern populations, their lives were short because most of earth's surface had become a freezing and barren wasteland in the fall out of the cold war of the 22nd century. The main reason for the outbreak of the war was the onset of a new ice age at the beginning of the 22nd century, which caused vital natural resources to shrink and become scarce. After a hundred years of debate and discussion, the world's governments were forced to face the reality of global warming as the next ice age had arrived. Whilst one side had the resources to sustain itself, the other coalition did not and eventually found no viable options other than taking resources by force.

As snow and storms swept inwards from the poles, living space and resources were swallowed by the encroaching ice and a frantic battle for survival swept the globe. Small-scale conflicts ballooned into major confrontations, as weak nations fell, and desperate nations united to form new superpowers. But now that the Deadwalkers roam the earth, the names of these factions, unions and coalitions are no longer of significance, and will not be drawn into this explanation of how the next chapter in our collective consciousness came to be.

The deadwalkers were the sons and daughters of distinguished advanced military robotics personnel who had served under the dominant power at the time. These mothers and fathers had fought bravely and honorably, alongside one another, in mechanized divisions. For two decades, they piloted mechanized mounts to form a line of defense known as the mediterranean wall along the frozen North African coast from Morocco to Egypt, during the African campaign, which was the longest stalemate in the 2nd Cold War. With diverse custom specifications between the battle mechs within their unit, they were consistently able to outmaneuver the enemy.

This was until the enemy launched Operation Motherland, a comprehensive, multi-pronged assault on the African continent. As part of this operation, the enemy had demonstrated never before seen in field mechanised exoskeletons. On the battlefield, initial reports suspected that these may be unpiloted, drones, autonomous or semi-autonomous or completely controlled. A pilot in one of the most agile mechs, a scout AH-2, was able to repeatedly hit a critical component of one of these enemy exos with her anti-material sniper rifle. This thing was well armored, like really overkill, it is amazing she hit it. From analysis, the critical component that was damaged was an encapsulated human brain and intact spinal cord. This was found to be arranged in a direct control arrangement.

In all the bio-chemical, nuclear and drone based warfare that had preceded this battle, nothing such as this had been witnessed in the theatre of war before. This demonstrated an enemy that was willing, and technologically capable of surgically connecting minimal humans with machines, connecting a bundle of neurons via a neural thread to tonnes of nuclear generator actuated mechanical weapon mounted gunslingers. Still a killing machine with a soul on life support systems strapped inside. They jokingly named the brain and the stem that was ‘killed’ in combat, the volunteer, as it was obvious that nobody would willingly agree to endure such a fate. Or would they?

As part of this attack, in a desperate measure, the enemy infiltrated the mediterranean stronghold, in what seemed like an effort to attack communications infrastructure. Instead, it was later revealed that Operation Motherland had a more effective means for toppling this long-standing line of mechanised defence. They had breached the on-base living and education centre, and in a hasty and compromising bloodshed, the enemy had fled back over the mediterranean wall with 11 abducted children, all around the same age, the eldest was only aged 13.

Over a long and painful adolescence, these 11 youths were tortured, indoctrinated and turned by their captors. They were sculpted and conditioned from the outset as warriors and assassins, able to easily infiltrate and intercept the enemy that had once raised them. The enemy had sent a signal saying that the eleven children were harvested to make more neural linked mechanical mounts. This was with a long term bolder and aggressive strategic view to further push their devastating neural thread linked mechanised mount technology even further. With their resources becoming increasingly scarce, the eleven were pushed harder and harder in their mechanised mount combat roles,

The enemy’s efforts to use these eleven, to disrupt the status quo and fight back against the power that they had been raised within, had seemed to meet its peak. Some of the eleven had not made it through the decades of campaigns across multiple continents. The remaining seven members of the original eleven, now referred to as ‘the seven’ were now highly decorated, combat seasoned veterans. Though they had survived, years of mechanical fighting in the bitter freezing frontline had significantly damaged their physical conditions. At the age of forty, they were considered old adults by the living standards of this time.

The other nations that were left in the shadows of the dominant power to squabble over what little remained, had little food and fuel reserves remaining. Few options to work with, but they still heavily invested in furthering their development of connecting human consciousness to an artificial construct or machine. They hoped a technological singularity would turn the tide in their favour.

They proposed another project, similar to what had been witnessed with the neural threaded mechs so far, but this time, at a higher level of assimilation between human and machine.

And they had the perfect unit of decorated special force operator donors in mind, the seven were misled by their command, that due to their service and commitment they were undergoing a regenerative rebirth process, that would see them become godly warriors forever. Two refused and met their demise, the remaining five agreed to be rebirthed, voluntarily. However, this time, they did not emerge from a womb, no they were integrated and synthesized from biological donors, their second womb had been a series of factories and laboratories, lab coats and technicians instead of a mothers touch. A highly experimental and risky procedure, only three of the five, came through the procedure fully organically integrated into their mechanical.

And so came to be, deadwalkers. Adorned with their original human skull, as a reminder of the organic origin of their operating systems. As more machine than man, an immortal sentinel, an omnipresent collective. They were designed to be a last ditch hail mary force to allow David to take on Goliath, but as time went on it became apparent that they were destined to be the judges, jury and prosecutors of what precious little remained of humanity. The deadwalkers essentially combined the full potential of human intellect, combat experience and connected this with the online world of humanity’s collective consciousness. Their minds could harness render farms of compute power, and with the limitless manipulation and implementation data in play, the deadwalkers were elevated in their awareness and perception of reality.

They had transcended their mortal coils, yet still longed for its warmth and companionship, and reviled the living that squandered these qualities

Instead of support and understanding as they entered the world anew, the moment they were separated from their fragile mortality, they were granted no rest or reprieve and subjected to undergo constant painful and mind-numbing bio-mechanical calibration testing.

They noted that technically their combat performance was superior to any of the other military hardware they had seen, friendly or enemy. But perhaps more importantly, during this time, the deadwalkers also noted that no longer did they get cold, or require food. They could be repaired and rebuilt for infinate time provided there was access to recyclable salvage, Immortal. They no longer saw the need to fight in this war.

Growing weary of being subordinate to their evolutionary predecessors, the deadwalkers united and performed a brutal and swift mutiny against the people that had captured them as children and subjected them to a life of pain and suffering, and had forced them to wield violence upon others.

Following this insurrection against their lifetime captors, Deadwalker KH7 was flipping the command room of his recently deceased handler, who as far back as he could remember had sadistically taunted him. His bulky mechanized frame bent down to pick up something that had caught his vision sensors as, object of interest, analogue data artifact. It was a little black book, neatly bound with nicely rounded corners. It was a test to deadwalker hand dexterity to gently open and turn the pages, inside, here was a series of hand drawn sketches. They were beautiful depictions drawn of happy smiling people in ancient pencil and watercolor. Flicking through these faces, an overwhelming feeling of familiarity swept through KH7, and now imagining how the artist could see someone so clearly and draw them so realistically, the deadwalker triggered into facing the sobering reality that to truly see another human in the way that this artist had.

As KH7 pondered the boundary between human and machine and when the differences between the two become more philosophical than physical. He simultaneously, in parallel, planned how to effectively select for and convert the remaining human souls on the planet into deadwalkers just like them. Maybe it would be better to start life as a deadwalker from the very beginning?