When Pigs Fly, Part 2/3
Rejected Shorts
(AI image, not indicative of final robot)
I wrote this for an anthology pitch that wanted a giant hypersonic military robot that had a playful heart of a child. It got rejected, but it’s still a fun piece. I’m posting it in segments here.
WHEN PIGS FLY
Copyright 2024 by Graham Bradley
***
Back at the Mockheed-Larkin headquarters, Grant Greeley was having one hell of a morning. It only got worse when SecDef’s office called him back.
“Minos, this is Greeley,” he said into the phone, bracing himself.
“Grant, this is Colonel Andolsek. I’m supposed to be teaching my grandson how to ride a donkey this morning. Tell me why the hell I’m watching your robot steal balloons in New York instead.”
He was hoping he’d only have to deal with Andolsek’s assistant, but no such luck. Greeley swore up a storm inside his head. Outwardly he remained calm. “I’m sorry you had to do that Colonel, and the solution is in process as we speak. Our lead programmer found a glitch in one of the integrated systems from K-WAK Universal. It refused the operating system as constituted and rewrote its own translator which apparently caused a series of logic gaps. We’ll have the details in the after-action report but right now we’re working on closing those gaps. It shouldn’t take long.”
Silence came over the phone for five agonizing seconds, long enough for Grant to worry.
“K-WAK being the mobility engineers? They built the legs on Minos?”
“Yes sir. We wanted to handle the mobility processes in-house, but part of the DOD’s terms mandated that we use K-WAK’s systems. I think they’re one of Senator Curtis’ constituents.” Curtis was part of the approval committee that had signed off on the Minos contract. Grant hated the guy but didn’t live in his state and couldn’t vote against him in the last election. He hated K-WAK even more. God willing, he could cut them out of the project once this mess was all over.
“K-WAK built the legs. Your robot isn’t kicking my UH-60, Grant. It’s shooting my boys with a laser.”
“Because that’s its only integrated weapon, sir. And the battery is only good for a couple of shots. I’d recommend calling off the Black Hawk, sir—this robot is farther along in its development than we thought.”
“And?”
“And when it shoots down that chopper, it can recover any weapons that it drops and appropriate them for its own arsenal. Last thing we need is a robot with a faulty logic system and a couple of Hellfire missiles.”
Andolsek went silent. Grant could imagine the man stroking his impressing mustache. After a few seconds he spoke.
“Our tracker shows the UH-60 has moved over Central Park, how long until you get a collar on that robot?”
“Within fifteen to twenty, sir,” Grant lied. If—when—it took longer than that, he’d have to find an even better way to pin this on K-WAK.
“If it goes out of control, I will smoke that thing, Grant. And you’ll have to explain to the Senate just why you think you shouldn’t be in prison for it,” Colonel Andolsek said. “I was in Manhattan on 9/11, son. We’re not going through anything like it again.”
“Understood, sir. We’re on it.”
***
>Minos, target identified: Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, United States Army
>Armaments: M134G minigun (1), AGM-114 Hellfire missiles (8)
>Occupants: Pilot, gunner, additional soldiers (6)
>Target OFFENSE committed, weapon type M134G, rounds (26), damage minor
>Return fire to nose cone [FAIL] Battery 76%
>Target retreating. Current location: 40.777436, -73.959366, heading south/southwest
>Estimated destination: Central Park (?) [Pursue]
>Return fire to tail rotor [FAIL] Battery 49% [FAIL] Battery 24%
>[SUCCESS] Weapon battery depleted. Target immobile. Casualties [0] Injuries [?]
>UH-60 immobile at 40.776857, -73.966100
>Vulnerability [Moderate] Offensive capability [Sub-optimal] Integrate armaments
>Release primary objective Piggie-Wigstaff
>Radar warning: Rapid approach, potential combatants
>Sonograph analysis: P&W F119 Turbofan [4], designation F-22 Raptor [2]
>Threat analysis: Hostile [high]
>Engaging…
***
“Janet!”
Henry cut through the crowd, honking the motorcycle’s needling little horn as he caught up to his wife and daughter. Janet usually had a cool head and didn’t fall apart under pressure. Carly was distressed as any three-year-old might be. He hit the brakes and pulled the helmet off. Janet almost cried right there in the street, coming around the stroller to throw her arms around Henry.
“Your robot! It was in the parade! What’s going on?” she sobbed.
“Babe, there’s no time. You and Carly get on the bike now, we have to get home.”
“But…how? That’s not safe!”
“Put her between us and hold on, I’ll go as slow as I need to!” Henry said, checking his watch.
“WHY?” Janet demanded, nervous about the ride, and abandoning the stroller.
“Because I left my computer open, which I shouldn’t have, and you put Carly on it, which you shouldn’t have, and she talked to my AI, which she shouldn’t have, and it’s going to take all of us to undo this!”
Janet’s mouth fell open, stunned. She looked at her crying daughter in the stroller, then back at Henry, gesturing for them to get on.
“She made your robot grab the pig?”
“FOR THE LOVE, JANET!”
Janet flinched, then leapt into action, unbuckling Carly from the stroller and setting her on the bike between herself and Henry. The bike sagged under their combined weight and he revved the engine hard, riding the two blocks home with his feet mostly off the pegs.
***
>Minos, target identified: F-22 Raptor (2), United States Air Force
>Armaments: AMRAAM (6/12), M61A2 Vulcan 20mm gun (480/960)
>Occupants: Pilot (1/2)
>Communicants: McGuire AFB, E7-A Wedgetail Overwatch
>Estimated destination: Forces in reserve. Targets standing by. Pursue.
>Activating connecting probe…accessing AGM-114 controls...
>Vulnerability [Elevated] Offensive capability [Elevated]
>Engaging…
***
Charger narrowed his eyes at the blip on his radar, moving across the HUD towards his position and closing fast. That had to be their bandit.
“Hotrod, tally one, seven o’clock and closing,” he said.
“Copy that Charger,” Hotrod replied. “Wedgie just called in, says the bandit engaged a Black Hawk in Central Park.”
Charger gritted his teeth. “And?”
“No casualties, but the bird bought it. They’re saying this thing stripped its guns and headed for us. Loadout includes 8 Hellfires and a mini.”
Charger watched the blip draw closer to the center on his radar. “Hellfire is laser-guided, is this thing supposed to plug into the control box too? How’s it gonna shoot, let alone—”
A shrill tone cut him short, warning him that someone was locked on. Hotrod had just shouted “Smoke!” when Charger banked hard to the right, almost hitting his flares before thinking that it wouldn’t matter, the Hellfire wasn’t a heat-seeker…
One missile shrieked past him. Charger turned his bank into an aileron roll, flattening out on Hotrod’s right wing. Before he could say anything else the tone came back, this time over his radio, as the bandit locked a Hellfire onto Hotrod, who broke hard to the left at the last second. A hundred pounds of death and destruction passed right through the airspace where Hotrod had been, lancing through the sky over Whitestone Bridge.
“Guess it figured out how to shoot!” Hotrod said.
“Dammit, we gotta get out of the city! That thing has six shots left and one of them is bound to hit something!” Charger said. Hellfires had about a six-mile range. It was time to get over open water. He pushed the throttle forward, urging the bandit to chase. Hotrod kept up, immediately hitting Mach 0.5, aiming for Long Island Sound.
“Tower to Hatchet One, come in Hatchet One.”
“Go ahead, Tower!”
“Be advised, we’re told the Raptor cannot outrun this bandit, over.”
Charger glanced at the HUD again as the terrain raced by. The blip had matched speed almost instantly, and was starting to close. At Mach-point-five! “Well hell, give me something to work with! What’s his range, his altitude, his max—”
“Bandit is an ML product with hypersonic capacity,” said the Tower.
“Repeat last! Did you say hyper—”
A third object barreled between Charger and Hotrod, going far faster than the Hellfire missiles, fast enough that its wake pushed the two Raptors apart. Charger white-knuckled the stick to keep his plane under control, and for a split-second he got a good look at whatever the hell this thing was.
It had a bulky fuselage, if you could call it that—a blocky shape with flattened edges and corners, like someone had taken a decahedron and smashed down the tips, giving it two more sides. There was a name for that but Charger couldn’t remember it and didn’t care. At the bottom of its “belly” there was a circular rocket booster, surrounded by equidistant limbs, giving it the appearance of a four-legged spider. Two of the legs held a Hellfire missile pod and the other two manipulated a minigun. The damn thing was about as aerodynamic as a doghouse yet it was outrunning them.
“I’m gonna find the nerds who built that thing and kick every last one of them in the nuts,” Hotrod seethed.
“Focus, bandit is coming around. Fire AMRAAMs when ready,” Charger said.
“Hella,” said Hotrod.
***
Henry took the stairs two at a time, carrying Carly in his arms. Janet hurried to catch up. He was glad they got a ground floor-level apartment, at least. He thundered through the back door and up to his office, sitting Carly on his right leg, panting heavily.
“Okay sweetie, do you want to say hi to Piggie Wigstaff again?” he asked between breaths, waking up the laptop.
“I saw Piggie! I saw Piggie outside!”
“Good, let’s talk to her some more, okay?”
Carly giggled with delight. “I talked to Piggie on the ‘puter!”
“Yes, you did! Do you remember what you said to Piggie?” Henry prodded. This was crucial. If anything was going to work, it would depend on Carly’s performance.
“She sang the song,” Janet said as she entered the room, breathing hard and shrugging out of her jacket.
Henry typed in his authentication codes from memory and activated the laptop’s AI client, nicknamed ‘Annie’ by the other guys in the office. “Annie, I need you to pretend you’re Piggie Wigstaff,” he said, still out of breath. Damn, he needed to hit the gym.
A digital avatar of a vaguely female scientist in a lab coat appeared on the bottom right corner of his screen. “Hi Henry! Here’s what I found about Patty Wagstaff.” Annie brought up a slideshow of images, showing a woman in her fifties. The headline said she was in some kind of aviator hall of fame.
“The hell?” Henry said, scanning the text. There was nothing about the cartoon.
“She’s a real person, that’s who Piggie is based on,” Janet said. “It must have misheard you.”
“Piggie Wigstaff,” Henry said more clearly, with frustration.
“Piggie!” Carly said, clapping her hands with glee.
“Talk to us like you’re Piggie, okay Annie? Like you did yesterday, with Carly.”
The little avatar tapped her chin in thought while Henry opened his coding program and found the offending lines from yesterday’s session. Somewhere in Minos’ decision tree there was a tangled cluster of bad branches. He had to sort this out.
Annie’s avatar disappeared, replaced by the porky aviatrix with the winged jacket. “Hi boys and girls! Guess what I can do!”
“PIGGIE CAN FLY!” Carly screamed.
Music flowed from the speakers as the theme song began. Carly started dancing on Henry’s lap, bouncing and swaying from side to side as she sang the Piggie Wigstaff tune from memory:
“Look up high into the sky,
You can see her, so can I,
She has wings, that is no lie,
Piggie can fly, Piggie can fly!”
Henry looked over his shoulder at Janet. “I only know the first verse!” he whispered. Janet nodded and made a go ahead motion with her hand, clearing her throat. Henry hummed along as Janet and Carly belted out the second verse.
“She makes friends with one and all,
If they swim or walk or crawl,
Old and young and big and small,
Fly with Piggie, let’s have a ball!”
“How is this supposed to help?” Janet asked.
“Annie integrated the lyrics into the Minos’ value engine,” Henry explained, lifting Carly off his lap and handing her to Janet. Their daughter was still laughing and clapping her hands as the music played in the background. “That entire song is basic value distinction. Couple it with the imperatives of the operating system, and it’s not hard to see how the song says ‘flying’ and ‘making friends’ are good things. Minos mixed that up with other basic functions, like integrating technology into its fuselage, and decided to install its own booster engine.”
“What the hell does that have to do with stealing a parade balloon and attacking a helicopter?” Janet asked.
“It’s confused.”
“Balloon!” Carly shrieked, pointing out the window. Outside, the oversized Piggie Wigstaff balloon floated lazily above the New York skyline, gaining altitude. “Piggie can fly!”
“We need Piggie to land,” Henry said, typing furiously through the screens on his computer. “Annie, open a link to Minos and give me active access to these sectors. Prepare to transmit this update, it’s only a few gigs.”
The AI avatar on screen reverted to the bland lady in a lab coat, once again tapping her chin. “Hmm. I’m sorry Henry, but Minos doesn’t want to open those pathways.”
“Wait…what? Want? I have administrative access.”
“Minos is in combat,” Annie said flatly.
“Oh, no,” Henry said quietly.
“What’s wrong?” Janet asked.
“Combat always takes precedence, so it doesn’t get distracted by something else when it’s fighting. It’s still transmitting though…Annie, give me the last ten minutes from Minos’ eye. Play it back at five-X speed. Now.”
A lot had happened in ten minutes. The robot had cut the taglines from the giant Piggie balloon and butted ahead in line for the parade, scanning faces in the crowd for Carly. Feedback from the code suggested it wanted to be Carly’s friend. Then the Black Hawk showed up, and basic military programming kicked in, detecting hostility, and the fighting began. Minos fired its laser four times, killing the battery while severing the tail from the UH-60. Fortunately they were over Central Park when that happened, flying relatively low. No casualties.
There was a gasp behind Henry, but not from Janet; Carly pointed at the downed chopper on screen, mouth agape. “No, Piggie! That’s not nice!”
Minos quickly absorbed the Black Hawk’s arsenal, then went hunting for the Raptors that it could identify by sound only. A quick glance at the code readout in the corner confirmed that Minos knew the Raptors were coordinating with the Black Hawk—part of the same military. That was part of its friend-or-foe routines, and once it had misread the Black Hawk, it would misread all its allies…
That might include more than just two fighter jets. That might include anyone who was talking to those jets, especially if Piggie was “friends with one and all.” Minos could have enemies. In the binary reading of the base operating system, there was—technically—such a thing as “enemies to one and all.”
“Henry, we’re caught up with the feed, so I have to play the rest in real time,” said Annie.
“Understood,” Henry said absently, mind racing, trying to figure out what to do next…