As Meg Sees It

by Gary Clifton

“Meg, enemy advancing in force! For God’s sake, shoot somebody!”

An off-target airstrike had just annihilated Kovac’s team. Frantically, he dug through the debris and found an old M-16 rifle and several bandoliers of ammunition.

The mission had been temporary: “A month at best.” Now, out of food, short of ammunition, all human members of Kovac’s little army dead, the enemy was attacking in numbers. He stood alone alongside a mechanical monster that was armed with the firepower to stop the onslaught. But the machine refused to follow orders.

A twenty-year veteran CIA field operative, Kovac had been embedded with survivors of the Dawlat Khani tribe in the rugged hills above Afghanistan’s Turkman Valley, sixty miles west of Badgram Air Force Base. A clan of about one hundred were well-armed and well-paid by the U.S. to disrupt Taliban operations in the area.

He’d been within days of rotating out. Alerted by satellite of impending Taliban movement on his position, Langley had helicoptered out three lab squints and twenty Navy Seals. The squints brought along an Alexa-Sega 440 prototype unit code-named “Meg.”

Meg was a CAR — Combat Armed Robot — an all-terrain killing monster complete with a deadly remote drone called rather morbidly “Eternity,” which obeyed her every “thought.”

Kovac cynically scoffed at the idea that a machine could really think. Bullets were his world, not AI. He had no understanding of or respect for the little monster. He felt Meg was no more a “she” than “she” could actually think or recognize herself in a mirror. The ugly mechanical gadget could only know what was programmed into her by human hand, or so he thought.

Meg, the size of a riding lawnmower, was equipped with all-terrain tracks plus legs that automatically lowered to boost her over any ground, and she could also float.

The drone, Eternity, resembling a TV antenna, rested on her top-bulge, which Kovac thought of as a head or turret. Eternity flew via an anti-gravity system, drawing magnetic force from Meg.

A metal tag on the back of the turret was the genesis of the name “Meg”; it was short for “megawatt.” The screen on the front of Meg’s turret displayed Eternity’s movements. Kovac would soon learn when Meg launched Eternity; it wreaked havoc down in the valley, then settled back gently atop the bulging turret like a falcon to its master.

Clearance to immolate or spare targets was displayed by flashing lights on Meg’s screen. Green was death, red was life. A built-in fail-safe device negated Meg’s ability to auto-fire when red blinking lights appeared on the screen. She was somehow programmed to recognize friend or foe. Kovac thought only God knew how her system functioned.

When Dawlat tribesmen ventured anywhere close, Meg’s screen lit up red like Christmas past; the Dawlat were equipped with American weapons. She would, however, obey oral commands of her designated operator to fire at scattered Taliban forces armed with stolen American equipment who moved among the rocks down in the valley.

The fail-safe system also controlled the pencil-sized tube gun protruding inches from Meg’s chest. On green confirmation, the little pipe could unleash a tremendous blast devastating the hostiles.

Neither Meg’s pencil cannon nor the drone required reloading. They were multi-fire, carbon-compacted units, both seemingly enabled to fire indefinitely. Both were recharged by the carbon-cycle regeneration of the satellite High and Mighty as it passed overhead.

Earlier that morning, Meg’s operator had used a small keyboard beneath Meg’s turret screen to code in the voices of the rest of the group. He’d assured them Meg would now obey their voice commands.

Suddenly, a Taliban force Kovac estimated at two hundred charged up through the rocks, using shoulder-fired missiles as artillery. He radioed Bagram to report the critical situation. He was promised help but given no time frame. He requested an air strike. Shortly after, the only remaining operational radio was disabled.

Only then did Kovac learn of the true killing horror of the little contraption, Meg.

When the enemy fired missiles, Meg tossed up a force screen of metallic misdirect chaff. In hours, some Seals, Meg’s operator, plus many Dawlat allies had been killed, but Meg had repeatedly saved remnants of Kovac’s crew. By midafternoon, her pencil gun and drone had silenced the invaders.

Suddenly, farther west in the valley, a hundred more figures appeared from the rocks, too far away to identify. Kovac concluded they could only be Taliban.

Kovac cautiously ordered Meg to delay firing. He climbed down the slope to study the new invaders with binoculars. It was then the misdirected airstrike from Bagram whizzed in and spewed death and fire along the mountain crest, killing his entire crew. He crawled back to the carnage

Meg said, “Unit uninjured.” Holy Hell, the thing could talk, and he didn’t even know how to turn it off and on.

“Meg!” he ordered, “shoot now!” Her screen lights flickered between red and green. “Shoot or send the drone. American equipment is fooling you. Shoot!”

“Friendlies. Red, red,” her screen crackled.

He opened up with his M-16. In the valley, a man threw up his hands and fell. Others scattered to shelter.

“Red...red!” Meg squawked. “Targets are friendlies.”

Kovac fired another rifle burst.

Meg’s turret yawed slowly around. Kovac never even sensed, let alone felt the beam when Meg vaporized him. He became part of the atmosphere ten thousand times faster than his nerve synapses could warn his brain.

Kovac, had he still existed, would have been stunned to see the red lights on Meg’s screen curved upward at the edges. Was it a smile? Kovac would have insisted a machine that couldn’t think, certainly couldn’t smile, perhaps only if in her “mind,” she had suppressed the correct immediate threat to allies.

“U.S. Marines, cease firing,” wafted up the incline.

“Friendlies, Mr. Kovac,” Meg said, her screen-smile beaming red. “Mission accomplished.”

But Kovac was no longer there to hear.