Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy by Joe Pace Page B

off their clubbing of the broken and lifeless Captain Baker. Their attention had turned to the unfortunate Machrine that had tried so valiantly to rescue the captain. Pearce could see the designation-badge, dented and scraped. Alexander-457. Its arms hung loose from its shoulders, connected by sparking cables, light flickering in those white, inhuman eye slots, as the sound of metal on metal rang with each strike. In the instant before the shuttle doors closed, those eyes and that plasticene face locked onto Pearce, and he swore that he saw in them agony, pleading, and even fear.
     
    “Bill!”
    It took long minutes for Pearce to realize that he was on Earth, in his own bed, and his wife was gripping both shoulders, shaking him awake. He looked at her and tried to focus on her face as the nightmarish images of Cygnus slowly receded.
    “I’m all right,” he croaked, finally. “Just a bad dream.”
    “A bad dream,” Mary repeated. “About that planet.”
    Pearce thought about lying to her, if only to make her feel better, but knew he couldn’t fool her. He nodded. She released her hold on him and crossed her arms over her chest.
    “Mary, it was a just a dream.”
“A nightmare.”
    “Fine.” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “Have it your way. A nightmare.”
    “And that’s where the Minister wants you to go. Back to the place that’s given you nightmares for more than ten years. You’re soaked through with sweat, Billy.”
    “They’ve been getting better.” It was the truth, sort of. Pearce didn’t have the heart to tell her that he only had the dreams when he was home, when he slept here. Somehow, illogically, the nightmares never seemed to find him on board ship, and he’d been there a lot lately.
    “I’m going to take a shower.”
    He left her there, next to the swamp his sweat had made, and shuffled into the bathroom. As the hot water cycled in the shower stall, he rubbed his hands over his face. It had been so vivid, so real, especially the part about the Machrine. Usually he woke filled with renewed grief about Baker’s death, guilt over his inability to save her, but this time it was the destruction of the robot he couldn’t shake. It didn’t make any sense. Machrines were programmed to serve, to fight, and if necessary, be destroyed. They had no concept of their own disposability and possessed no sense of self or identity beyond what was needed to function as part of their unit. Their programming allowed them to display what appeared to be courage, but how could there be true bravery if there was not also fear? The shower had reached the ideal temperature, and he stepped in. He knew he would be limited to the allotted five minutes, and that this meant he would get no shower in the morning, but it was worth it as the sweat and salt sluiced from his skin.
    Pearce knew better than to succumb to maudlin anthropomorphizing of the robots. They were machines, not men. The roboticists of the Bailey Institute kept improving their designs, giving their creations personality, humor, and other traits that made for collegial deep-space companions, but they had not yet given them humanity. And they never could. Robotics operated under the well-known axiom of Positronic Horizon Theory, which stipulated that artificial intelligence, however sophisticated, could mimic sentience but could never truly achieve it. The Theory was well-known because it was well-publicized, in an effort to minimize any resentment or fear people might feel toward the mechanical men. Robots could never be self-aware, could never exceed their programming, and so could never be a threat to humans.
    Even their usefulness was limited. They were, and could only be, Machrines. Pearce had heard once that a clever marketing consultant had suggested that name, since the robots were designed to replace human Marines as the Admiralty’s fighting corps. Machines + Marines = Machrines. They were useless as starmen, unable to reef, nor hand, nor