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  “We have a connection,” Eagleeye said.

  “Ooo,” Slate said. “I think Eagleeye here has got the hots for Braxti boy.”

  “No I mean, this,” Eagleeye said, rotating his finger to indicate the whole table. “The camaraderie we have. That’s a connection.”

  “I suppose so,” Braxton said.

  “What do you mean, you suppose,” Eagleeye said. “You can’t get any deeper than this. We’ve fought at each other’s side. Died for one another. We’re closer than blood brothers and sisters.”

  “In a sense, we are blood brothers and sisters now,” Hank said. “We’re all Cicadas. All Mind Refurbs.”

  “He’s right, you’re all family, as far as I’m concerned,” Brontosaurus said. The heavy gunner had biceps just as thick as Hank’s. “All of you. And I’d die for any of you in a heartbeat. If a grenade dropped in the center of this room, I’d be the first one to throw myself on it.”

  “But that’s only because you know you have a mind backup,” Slate said.

  “No,” Brontosaurus said. “That’s not why at all. It’s because I meant what I said. I’d die for any one of you.”

  For once Slate didn’t joke in reply.

  Wearing a bandanna patterned with skulls, Manticore shifted uncomfortably nearby. Eric didn’t think it was because of what was said, but due more to the two bikini-clad women sitting in his lap.

  “So, Ms. Ball Crusher,” Manticore said. “How does it feel to be surrounded by women who are so much sexier than you are?”

  Crusher wore her usual bandanna with rifle-totting happy faces on it; in her lap, meanwhile, were two women in bikinis, just like Manticore had.

  “I’m just as beautiful,” Crusher said.

  “Notice how I said sexier, not beautiful,” Manticore said. He nodded toward the women in his lap, and then those on the stage. “Look at how they move. Everything about them oozes sexuality. You, the only thing you ooze is a cold arrogance.”

  “Hey, maybe it helps keep the assholes like you at bay,” Crusher said.

  “Actually, no,” Slate said. “It’ll only draw in the assholes. Trust me, I know: speaking as a former and still current asshole.”

  “None of us ladies are even seeing these so-called sexy women anyway,” Crusher said. She indicated the two dancers in her lap. “They might look like female strippers to you, but to us they’re male hunks with dongs like nothing you’ve ever seen. And not just these two, but those on stage, too.”

  “She’s right,” Bambi said. “You won’t believe the bulging jockstraps on these studs.”

  “I bet they don’t got nothing on my dong!” Slate said. “When women invented the word, they were thinking of what I got!”

  “Actually, I beg to differ,” Bambi said. “What you have is like a croissant compared to a baguette, mon cheri.”

  “Hmph,” Slate said. “Well I just adjusted my size, in case you want to go to the bathroom and compare.”

  “That’s quite all right,” Bambi said.

  “No come, I insist,” Slate said. “I gotta prove myself, you know.”

  “What, prove that you can adjust your size by sliding a control on a virtual display?” Morpheus asked. The Japanese woman wore a cowboy hat like Hank in homage of her armor operator role. “It takes skill, I’m sure.”

  “No, dude!” Slate said. “I mean my sexual prowess!”

  “There he goes, calling us dudes again,” Morpheus said. “Calls the guys bitches, and the ladies dudes. It has me wondering if he’s really a woman in a man’s body.”

  “It’s called game, dude,” Slate said. “Old habit from my ladies’ man days.”

  “Between you and me, bro, I doubt you were ever a ladies’ man,” Eagleeye said. “You like to talk the talk, but I’m willing to bet you can’t walk the walk.”

  “Shit, bitch, what do you know?” Slate said. “I had a different chick back at my place every week. White, coconut, banana, you name it. I had them all.”

  “Oh really,” Bambi said.

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t always that way, of course,” Slate said. “I had to build up to it. But I got real good, real quick. Things kinda spiraled out of control.” He shook his head. “Still, man, those were some of the best days of my life. Yet they were also the most lonely.”

  “Lonely, how could you be lonely if you had a different chick every week?” Hank said.

  “Well let’s just say I was sexually satisfied,” Slate said. “But emotionally, not so much. Sort of like now. I’m still pretty messed up, actually.”

  “Yeah, we can see that,” Crusher said.

  “I’m just thankful I don’t have to go through the pain anymore,” Slate said. “The loneliness, the sense of loss for who I once was, they’re like tiny little sparks in the back of my mind. I’m aware of them, and yet I don’t care. Emotion suppression, baby. We’d all be lying on the floor in the fetal position, sucking our thumbs without it. But thanks to emotion suppression, we’re the cruel, cold-blooded killers we are today.”

  “We’re not just killers,” Tread said. He wore a cowboy hat like Morpheus and Hank. “We’re so much more than that. But I do admit, we’re cold-blooded in every pursuit these days. Sex… war… the little competitions we have going amongst ourselves…”

  “I sometimes wonder,” Frogger said. “Maybe it would be better to have emotions again. So that we weren’t cold-blooded in all our pursuits, like you say. So that we could feel once more, and remember what it was like to live. So we could show pity to a fallen enemy, and love to our fellow men and women.”

  “I feel love for you all,” Brontosaurus said.

  “Of course you do,” Frogger said. “That’s because they programmed it in. We’re meant to feel that camaraderie all military units feel, of those who have gone through training and lived through hell together. We’d die for each other, certainly, and yet, that’s the only feelings we really have. Everything else is so muted. Well, except lust. But it’s not right. We have our human minds up here.” Frogger tapped his head. “It’s time to set those minds free.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Slate said. “Given the abysmal track record of Mind Refurbs in the past who’ve had their emotion settings dialed up.”

  “Get rid of the other constraints, too,” Frogger said. “The subroutines that force us to obey every order. The Rules of Engagement hooks embedded in our minds. Those routines probably factored in to our previous iterations losing it when their emotions were restored. Feeling like a prisoner is never something that goes over well with an emotional being.”

  “Shit man, the army is never going to drop those constraints,” Slate said. “Especially considering we’re army property. You know how much they paid for us? The last thing they want is for their expensive toys to go AWOL.”

  “We shouldn’t be property,” Eric said. All eyes turned toward him. “Machines are property. But sentient, self-aware beings… both Artificial Intelligence achieved through Deep Learning loops, and Mind Refurbs like ourselves, should be free.”

  “It’s a nice dream,” Morpheus said. “But it will never happen.”

  “Unless we do it ourselves,” Eric said softly.

  No one commented. Maybe they hadn’t heard.

  It was probably for the best.

  “You know, it’s too bad we’re not allowed to contact the descendants of our friends and family,” Eric continued. “Especially now, considering we’re about to go on our first deployment.”

  “Rules is rules,” Slate said. “You know that, bro. Besides, it’s better this way. What are we going to say to our descendants anyway? Hey bitch, you don’t know me, but I used to know your great great great grand-daddy. He was my man bitch. Das right, he took some schlong action on the side.”

  Eagleeye chuckled. “It’s true, what are we going to tell them? We have nothing in common. They don’t even know the people we’re talking about.”

  “But it would be nice to see them,” Eric said. “I mean,
I’ve seen pictures of the descendants of my cousins on the social networks. Some of the VR avatars are uncanny in how similar they are to my actual cousins.”

  “Do yourself a favor bro, and forget them,” Slate said. “I’ve told you many times now. The sooner you can let go of the past, the easier it’ll be for you. Shit, it’s been what, six months that you’ve been here? If you’re still hanging onto the past, you got problems.”

  “We all let go of the past at our own speed,” Dickson said. “He’s no different. He’ll let go, eventually.”

  “I remember what happened to me when I first got here,” Donald said. “All I could think about was my family. My two daughters, and my son. My wife. Day in, day out. I created avatars for each of them so that I could live out my old life in VR when we were done with the day’s training. And for a while, I was happy, as much as people like us can be happy. For a while, I could forget what I was. But there was something missing. Whenever my wife told me she loved me, I told her the words right back by rote, but I never felt anything. My wife was a very beautiful woman, and sometimes I would have these insecure feelings about letting her go out alone, especially at night. I was afraid of losing her. But I never felt that fear after I was reborn. You know why?”

  “Because our emotions are suppressed,” Tread said.

  “That’s partially it,” the comm officer said. “But the real reason is because: it wasn’t real.”

  Eric sipped the pina colada he’d ordered from the virtual waitress and watched the dancers on stage for a while. The strange music played on in the background, not too loud, not too soft, but just right.

  He caught Morpheus smiling at him from underneath her cowboy hat beside him, her cheeks dimpling in that cute way that they did.

  “What made you join the army the first time round?” she asked him.

  “The freedom…” Eric replied. “I wanted to see the world. I only found out afterward that I should have probably joined the navy if I really wanted that.”

  “Ah yes, it was the same for me in Japan,” Morpheus said. “I actually applied for the navy, but my government rerouted the application to the army. Part of the quota system they had at the time.”

  “Quota system?” Eric asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “They had to fill certain quotas within each military branch.”

  “Ah.”

  He felt a hand on his knee underneath the table.

  “You want to come back to our virtual quarters?” Morpheus asked.

  “Our?” Eric said.

  “Bambi’s and mine,” Morpheus said.

  “Ah,” Eric said. He glanced at Bambi.

  She gave him a seductive look. Everyone else at the table seemed oblivious. Eric realized that they were showing one set of avatars to the rest of the group, and another set directly to him. They probably couldn’t hear anything the two women were saying, either.

  He adjusted his settings so that only Bambi and Morpheus could hear his replies.

  “I thought you were a black widow…” he said to Bambi.

  She smiled, still wearing that come hither look. “Rumors put out there by jealous men. In France, we have a word for a special arrangement among three people, have you heard it? Ménage à trois.”

  “I’ve certainly heard of it,” Eric said.

  The rest of the beach party was a blur. Eric agreed to meet Bambi and Morpheus fifteen minutes after they logged out of the party. He logged out, too, and entered the passcode to the virtual bedroom the two women had prepared.

  He hesitated before entering the final digit.

  Did he really want to get involved with those two, especially before a mission?

  Then again, what did it matter anyway? It wasn’t real. Nothing in virtual reality was.

  But feelings are real.

  He had to smile at that aberrant thought. It had come from a time when he was human. A time he had left behind long ago.

  We don’t have any feelings.

  He completed the passcode and the environment changed.

  As soon as he arrived, they went at it like rabbits. He wasn’t sure what turned him on more: the fact that he was with two girls, or that they were just as into themselves as they were him. Then again, he’d already experienced such arrangements a few times since creating his own virtual world, as part of exploring his new sexual identity. Maybe it was the novelty of doing it with members of his own team then, something that, while not strictly forbidden, was frowned upon, but apparently not enough to place a block in their codebases to prevent them from doing that very thing.

  Eric was expecting Bambi to go all gonzo on him after he climaxed, especially given the black widow warning Dickson had given him, but she seemed more interested in making out with Morpheus than anything else.

  She came up for air long enough to tell Eric: “You can go now.”

  “Well that’s a bit cold,” Eric said. “But hardly black widow behavior.”

  Bambi smiled in a rictus that bore her teeth, revealing twin fangs. “I won’t tell you again.”

  Eric raised his hands. “I’m going.”

  Morpheus looked up. “We’re never going to talk about this again, understand?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said.

  She looked at Bambi. “We should have used some randomly generated avatar. He’s going to make things weird between us on the team.”

  “I can get rid of him,” Bambi said. Her fingers began to grow into black claws. “Permanently.”

  Morpheus eyed Eric up and down. “No,” she said nonchalantly. “He can stay around. For now.” She turned toward Bambi and said, rather lustily: “I want you to keep those claws and fangs.”

  “You got it,” Bambi kissed her, giving Eric the evil eye the whole time.

  Eric shook his head. He felt like he’d cheated on Molly. And yet, his Molly wasn’t real, and only existed in VR. Whereas these two, they had very tangible presences in the real world. He’d have to be very careful not to bring this up again, as they asked. The two of them could make his life very miserable.

  He quickly logged out of that environment and returned to the recreation of his apartment as he remembered it while still alive.

  Molly was lying there on the bed, fast asleep. She was a heavily modded version of a virtual girlfriend AI he’d purchased a while back.

  Eric rested a hand on her cheek, and she snuggled against it.

  Donald’s right. I feel nothing. Not guilt. Not anguish over what I’ve done. Nothing.

  Because none of this is real.

  He dismissed Molly and she vanished from the bed.

  Then he lay down and closed his eyes.

  7

  Eric couldn’t believe he was back in Iraq. Well, it was called Kurdistan now. Same difference. He had left that place behind two hundred years ago. And now he was back.

  His memories of those days were crystal clear, thanks to the memory recall features provided by his AI core. All the grit, the boredom, the horror.

  I really am in hell.

  He was in the Caucasus Mountains region. He remembered doing a quick mission here back in the day. The place had been fertile, and covered in green growing things.

  Not anymore.

  A combination of climate change and unending wars had worked together to reduce these mountains and the outlying districts into the rocky landscape covered in the familiar “moon” dust that coated the rest of the country. Except this time he didn’t have to worry about that dust clogging his airways and triggering allergies. Sneezing, a runny nose, all things of his human past. No, the only thing he had to worry about these days was grit jamming his electroactuators. That, and a rocket propelled grenade slamming him upside the ass.

  Same feces, different latrine.

  He was serving as a sniper with Frogger, his mind twin. They were sheltered in a crumbling building overlooking the street below. The city was named Urdani, and was nestled in the mountains near the Turkish border. Blocky, sand-colored buildings li
ned a street that was meant for pedestrian traffic. Blast craters marred the cobblestone.

  Those buildings rose as high as nine stories, and were fronted in fire bricks whose blocks sometimes formed geometric patterns. Arched doorways and windows were outlined in white gypsum. Most of those windows were covered in wooden shutters so that passersby couldn’t see inside: the men of these lands liked to keep their wives hidden away.

  Minarets stabbed past the flat rooftops occasionally, set against the backdrop of the yellow-brown mountains behind them.

  He swept the cross-hairs of his laser sniper rifle along the street below. Sniping was something he was never really good at when he was in the army. But he was now. He had avoided killing anyone back during his human enlistment days, but he’d slaughtered a whole boatload of insurgents since arriving in Kurdistan. With his emotion controls dialed way down, he felt no remorse whatsoever. The army had gotten precisely what it paid for: a lean, mean, killing machine. Literally.

  Strictly speaking, he didn’t have to physically gaze through the scope. He could use the remote interface and access the video feed recorded by the scope, allowing him to scan for targets without having to place any part of his body in view. It was great when he needed to shoot around corners, for example.

  The rifle could also shoot something called a Vision Round. Rather than firing the built-in laser, it fired a dart that was able to embed in softer surfaces like wood and plaster. The dart contained a camera that could also be used to target hard-to-see enemies.

  But he had no such need for either of those two visual augmentations at the moment. Thus, he continued to peer through the scope. He spotted political graffiti upon the walls below, scribbled in Modern Arabic and English. Variants of “death to Kurdistan and the infidels” seemed popular in this area. That, and obscene pictures of Cicadas with breasts and hairy muffs drawn in—as if to imply that the robots were little better than the local women. Bambi and Ball Crusher loved those drawings. Morpheus, meanwhile, preferred to blow up any she found. The city walls and buildings behind them were littered with the pock marks of rocket propelled grenades she’d had her robots launch to wipe out such drawings.