March 5, 2054
10:57AM EST
CAPTAIN BOWLIN: So, what was I saying before we stopped?
MARCUS: Three grenades just went off in the TOW emplacement over you.
CAPTAIN BOWLIN: Oh, oh yes.
Well I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, because when I opened my eyes things hadn’t changed much. I was lying on my chest with my right arm twisted behind me and my left under my head. I was turned to the right, and I was basically looking in the same direction. I could see blood starting to pool under my arm and I knew I was hurt badly enough that I shouldn’t move. So I was stuck there. All I could do was bleed and watch. To be honest, considering how I felt at the time that was pretty OK with me.
MARCUS: What could you see happening?
CAPTAIN BOWLIN: We had two strikers out there doing regular short range patrols, an MGS2 and an MGS4-Ultra. They hadn’t headed out yet, so they were positioned on the north and south sides of the base. They did that to prevent them from both being taken out by a single missile or something.
So as fast as he could re-position himself, and bring his gun to bear on these things, the guy driving the MGS2 on the north side let loose with his 140mm.
Well, I have to say... that got their attention.
They were all bunching up near the wall and that APR KEP shell went through them like they were made out of paper mache. About six or seven of them were blown completely apart, or had a hole punched through them so big they fell over dead on the spot. The ones he missed didn’t waste any time though. They spun around as quick as cats and took off after that MGS2. So he slammed that thing into reverse and tried to keep some distance so could keep shooting. There was no way he could outrun them though and he knew it. He was just trying to buy some time in the hope that someone would give him some help. He got lucky, because it was just about then that the 4U cleared the curve of the wall and followed up with both of his 240 mm cannons. They hit them from behind and blew apart or shredded another twelve or thirteen of them. Those two guys are probably responsible for saving just about everyone who lived that day. Between the two of them, they managed to cut down almost half of those monsters.
Now, for things that didn’t really have faces, the ones still standing looked surprised as hell. I mean, I was still just laying on that rock and watching from a couple hundred yards away, and as a nurse I’m also no real expert on dealing with enemy forces. But even I could tell from the way they reacted that whatever their plan was - it just got fucked like a cheerleading squad on prom night... pardon my language. They hadn’t planned on going up against anything like what those MG’s were dishing out, and that 4U was almost brand new back then. Anyway, at that point, the ten or so left standing realized they had a serious problem. So they split up and went for both of the MGSUs at the same time. The gunners couldn’t reload and retarget before those monsters were on them, and started pulling those MGSUs apart into scrap metal. The remaining artillery emplacements were pouring shells into these things the whole time, and it sure annoyed them; but they didn’t stop until those tanks were in a hundred pieces. The men in those MGSUs bought us the seconds we needed to seal the place up, and start slowing those things down with RPGs and grenades; but the way they died was a hell of a price for a hero’s burial. They ripped those boys out by whatever part of them they could grab through a tear they made and then just pulled them apart like taffy. They took their time about it too - legs first, then arms, then the head, after they stopped screaming. You know, they could have just dropped an RPG inside each tank, or shot in through the holes to kill them. They didn’t have to do that. It was sadistic. Those boys put a hurt on them, so they killed them slow and horrible. They really were boys too, not a one of them over twenty-five. Kids really, we all were.
But a guy running one of the howitzers on the 4U side saw what they were doing and did the most horrible, and merciful thing you’ll ever see in war. He started blowing the heads off of the men as soon as they were yanked out. Killed them quick to prevent those monsters from torturing them. Well that really pissed these things off. It was like it was OK if he tried to kill them with that big gun, but mercy killing those men was spoiling their fun. The sick bastards couldn’t put up with that, so they all turned around at once and sent nine or ten RPGs into that gun nest so fast you barely had time to realize it before it was over.
These things didn’t even watch. The RPGs had barely left their launchers when they just turned and went back to torturing those men. Nice and slow. Like they had all the time in the world... even though they had to know there was air support on the way by then. The way those boys screamed was the most awful thing I’ve ever heard and it wasn’t the pain in it that went through you. As a nurse I’ve heard pain my whole career. It was the terror. Those poor boys, oh my God... those poor, poor boys. They didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.
MARCUS: So when they finished with the MGSUs, is that when they got into the base?
CAPTAIN BOWLIN: Oh, well no, but they were a lot closer than when I first spotted them; and that’s when I really got my first good look at them. The more you looked, the worse it got. Each one of them had a right hand big enough to hold a basketball inside of it with three long, clawed fingers and two opposing thumbs. The left hand was gone, and replaced with a compact rotating mount with six or seven different weapons on it. They’d point their left arm at something, the mount would spin, and whatever they needed would just flip out like a switchblade. Sometimes it was a heavy gauge projectile weapon, sometimes a grenade launcher, sometimes a blade, sometimes this jagged cutting spike like a three dimensional chain saw, or sometimes a pinch cutting tool like a bolt cutter. A couple of times we saw one use something like a small concentrated flame thrower. When they switched between them it happened faster than you could follow with your eye, but we could see it on the video playback. We watched it in slow motion as they’d switch between weapons three or even four times in under a second. It was incredible, and impossible... but there it was.
They were so fast and accurate with those things that if they saw you, and you were in range - you died. There was no way to react fast enough that they weren’t already a step ahead of you. Their reaction times were at least twice as fast as any human being’s and they were cunning as hell. That’s why we thought they were just hopped up soldiers in some new type of exo that we hadn’t seen yet.
We started dismantling the frameworks back at the Kansas facility thinking we’d find dead pilots inside, but as soon as we peeled back the armor, we weren’t sure what we were dealing with. We found that extensive modifications had been performed on the human tissues inside them. Then when we went deeper, we started thinking that they had surgically grafted volunteers into android pupate bodies. But it was worse. A lot worse. Eventually we realized that what we had originally thought were men blended into the machines were just parts. It was hard to estimate accurately, but we figured that only about twenty percent of them were human in the strictest sense. What tissue there was had been horribly bastardized.
The whole works: brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, digestive tract, and all of the other strictly necessary organs were all packed into an oblong compartment housed in the torso. They varied in size, but we never saw one bigger than a five-gallon bucket. Nerves and circuits actually grew out of that capsule and ran out to the other systems.
It was gruesome and... Incredibly efficient.
That was what we found everywhere. Efficiency. It was the fundamentalist religion of whomever their creators were - ruthless, unemotional efficiency. Every decision that went into every component of them, every part of their design, every step in their development, every piece of metal or plastic, every circuit, every cut of the scalpel, every piece of tissue. It all served efficiency. If it wasn’t efficient, it was ground off in a machine shop, or left on the operating room floor.
Even the code we pulled from their computers had been written right in binary. I didn’t really know what that meant until one of the techs explained it. He said that it had been written directly in machine language. No one does that anymore because it’s just too hard. It was possible back when computers were giant boxes, and you fed punch cards into them, but once they got more complicated it wasn’t something you could do in your head anymore. Apparently just trying to program a calculator in binary would be too much for most people. So that’s why they created all of the different programming languages. Those languages we can understand, and then a compiler translates it all into the ones and zeros that computers actually speak in...
But not this code.
This was stuff written to run on some of the most sophisticated micro-hardware in the world, but whoever did it sat down and wrote it all out in ones and zeros. Eddie and his crew were beside themselves over it because it’s just not possible, but there it was right in front of them anyway. It scared the living hell out of the people who really understood what that meant. Some of these biomedical tough guys, who looked completely bored while they were elbow deep in the bloody carcasses of these monstrosities, turned white when they saw that code.
It was perfect, not a single line or digit wasted, and it all hung together in a way that the techs said was impossibly tight. One girl who helped pull that code apart said it was almost beautiful in a way that really scared her, like a symphony that made your blood run cold when you heard it. When it was all over, and we were shut down, everyone on the team that dealt with that code needed counseling at the V.A. for years. Nobody really got better, especially the ones that made any progress on it - like Eddie Mathers. I guess you deserve to hear about him too, but not today.
Can we take another break now? I’m tired.
Transcription discontinued by officiator
13:47PM EST
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