Bewildering Stories

Change the color of the text to:

Change the color of the background to:


War and Semi-Permanent Pre-Hostility

by Eric Rivers

“And this, gentlemen and ladies,” said General Fowles indicating a robot less than two feet tall, “is one of my personal favorites: the JS-12 series.”

The others crowded around, excitedly. The Advanced Weapons Center made for a pleasurable change from the usual dull committee room.

“Umm... what does it do, General?” one of them asked.

“Well sir, it disguises itself as autonomous road-sweeper. We infiltrate it into enemy territory, where it behaves like any other road cleaning robot. But, when it finds a blind spot in the traffic-control camera network, it can swing into action and commit acts of sabotage or even assassination! Has an automatic self-destruct so it’s untraceable!”

The General laughed loudly.

“When are you going to begin deployment?” asked another one.

“The thing of it is, they are already in service!”

“What!” They were all taken aback.

“Lookit, I’ll get to all that once we’ve seen a few of the other devices, OK? All your questions will be answered.”

They calmed down a little. It was all going to be explained, and besides, the robotic weapons were tremendously exciting.

“Take a look at this little beauty.” The General put his arm around a five and a half-foot tall robotic nurse.

“We’ve all seen robotic nurses before, General.”

“What’s so special about this one?”

“It looks a little out of date.”

The General grinned. “Course it does. It’s supposed to. This is an exact replica of the robotic nurses used by some of our enemies. But this one doesn’t immunize children! Oh no! It actually infects them with specially designed viruses that they take back home and pass on to their families. A week, ten days tops, and they’re dead as a sack of hammers!”

An older, female delegate spoke up. “General, that is absolutely horrible!”

The General thought quickly. He was legendarily fast on his feet.

“Now wait a second, here. This robot is not for use on the general population. No no. We substitute this baby for the robotic nurses used in special clinics for senior officials and their families. Part of our decapitation strategy.”

The female delegate smiled. “Oh. I see. Government officials. That’s OK.”

A male delegate playfully elbowed her. “You’re a government official, Irene.”

“Shut up, Bill,” she said.

“Are we to assume that this weapon is also in use?” asked a younger delegate.

“I’ll get back to you on that in a little while, young feller,” said the General.

Jesus Christ on a foam rubber crutch, he thought. So many damn questions. What the hell’s wrong with these people?

The General picked up a small, latex tube.

“Looks just like your basic, standard-issue condom, don’t it?”

All the delegates nodded or murmured their agreement. One or two of them actually blushed. Good for nothing bible-thumpers, the General thought.

“Well, you’d be wrong there. The inner surface is coated with a gel saturated with botulism toxin. The outer surface is oiled with a bacteria that causes infertility in females.” He chuckled. “We gotcha comin’ and goin’.”

A couple of the delegates laughed, politely. The more religious among them inspected the tops of their shoes for a second.

“Am I to assume you drop these from the air, General,” a delegate asked.

“No sir, you are not. We deliver these to our agents in the enemy countries, and they actually sell them on the black market to retailers. Not often you can wage biological warfare and make a profit at the same time. Plus, a used condom’s the last place a doc’d look for a botulism vector, don’t you think?”

“Why on earth would you want to cause infertility,” asked Irene.

Holy Mother of Crap! Don’t these Washington types get anything?

“We’re in this for the long haul, ma’am. We’ve got to think proactive. Thinning the next generation of enemies will save us some of our grandkids.”

Let’em chew on that a while.

The General moved over to a large display area.

“Now this here is one of my favorites.”

He held up a garishly colored box. The writing system on it was unfamiliar to them, but the illustration clearly indicated that the box contained an inflatable adult female sex doll.

“Sadly, our enemy does not share our values. Perversion and sexual deviance are common in his territory. We have long used this to our advantage in intelligence gathering. This little lady looks just like all the other blow-up dollies enemy sickos use to get their jollies. But she’s got a difference! Her insides have been dusted with genetically engineered organisms. During the act of inflating it, the scumbag who’s blowing her up will ingest the microbes. These little critters combine in his blood stream, and then they alter the protein structure of his nervous system. It’s progressive and irreversible. Brain collapses in on itself. Death takes anywhere from six to eight months. Sort of “Mad Pervert Disease,” if you like. We think dill-holes should suffer.”

There. That sure shut them up. No one wants to look soft on weirdos.

The group moved on to what looked like a self-propelling vacuum cleaner.

“Now this is really ingenious. Looks like a robotic air-shaft spider, used to keep air shafts clean in large buildings. But instead of cleaning the air shafts, every time it senses an opening in a wall, it pumps aerosol teflon into the room. Kills anything that breathes within three seconds. Faster than cyanide. Not even enough time to sound an alarm of any kind.”

All the delegates just stared at device. They seemed unwilling to believe that anything so small could be so destructive.

One of the delegates looked up at the General.

“You said you’d tell us more about the deployment of these weapons,” he said.

“Actually, that’s a question above my pay rate. But I know someone who can help you there. If you’ll just follow me,” the General said, indicating a door.

He led them out into a hallway and down that to a conference room of some kind. There was a man inside looking out the window. One of the younger, more conscientious delegates recognized him before he turned around.

“Mr. Secretary,” he gasped.

The Secretary of Defense turned slowly around, and looked thoughtfully at the group. He was thinking about how to replace his secretary, whose breasts were beginning to sag, with that younger, firmer girl he’d glimpsed at the State Department. After a moment, he reminded himself why he had allowed himself to be convinced to speak to a delegation of the Arms Services Committee.

“Take a seat everybody,” he said.

They all sat down.

“I’m sorry to say that I only have a few moments to talk to you, I’m wanted back in the White House Situation Room. There’s a dust-up in Cabinda. The General asked me here to explain the philosophy behind our new weapons systems.”

“Now, like you, I was a little surprised that we had so many infiltration, sabotage, and assassination tools in development. However, when you consider the results of our Full Spectrum Dominance Program, what would you have us do? We have defeated every army worth fighting on this planet. That leaves us no choice but to wage secret war on the governments and societies that refuse to join our Global Pax Americana Co-Prosperity Sphere. Who knows? In fifty or a hundred years, these nations could conceivably pose a threat to some of our friends. Victory is no time to rest on one’s laurels. Oh no. We’ve got to take the fight to them, even before they have the ability or the will to fight us at all. Some of these countries aren’t even all that hostile to us. They just won’t accept our trade terms. It’s not enough that they live in poverty. Fear! Fear and the very real possibility of painful death will serve to keep them in line.”

He paused and looked at his audience. One of the delegates seemed uncomfortable.

“What is it? Representative Brown, isn’t it?” the Secretary asked.

“I thought we were at peace. We could finally address our health care and education systems.”

“We don’t like to think of it as peace here, so much as semi permanent pre-hostility,” the Secretary explained. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting.”

A few handshakes and he was gone.

“Now if you’ll follow me, we’ve got one heck of a brunch laid out of you,” the General said.

“Not those meals ready to eat, are they?” asked a delegate.

The General let out a loud barking laugh.

“Hell no! I wouldn’t feed those to the family dog! We’ve got fried shrimp in lime-chili sauce. Lots of those mixed-cuisine type things that are all the rage in New York and whatever. Nothing but the best!”

Impressed by a sensational Merlot, the talk over lunch quickly turned to Washington gossip. The subject of war and semi-permanent pre hostility never came up.

Copyright © 2003 by Eric Rivers