The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are by Michael Rizzo Page B

The
machine’s biggest concern seems to be prognosis: can she return to
duty, how soon, and in what condition? She’s being worked on now in
another part of the facility, so her numbers keep shifting.
    I try to find out why these “values” are so important
to the machine. And I find another set of stats. This one is a list
of “Outcasts”. They currently number two hundred and eighty three.
Two have been very recently eliminated. This has had a slight
positive effect on resource estimates. Food. Incoming water and
fuel (it looks like the ETE feed lines are still intact, or have
been repaired since the Bang).
    The hunting is justified to reduce the competition,
the strain on resources. It’s all very calculated. H-K parties are
assigned kill quotas. Highs scores here increase the H-K’s value.
Only a few H-Ks are on “probationary status” for not meeting their
quotas. (Hammond is one of these, but she also has a “protection”
flag as a “Legacy”. What this means isn’t elaborated, but I
remember Palmer calling Hammond a Legacy— she may be a descendant
of the original contractors, afforded traditional status despite
being probationary.)
    I go looking for history: colony manifests, personnel
rosters, records of what happened after the bombs fell. What I get
first is an “Outcast” versus “Residency” tree.
    It looks like it starts within a few years of the
Apocalypse. Once the surviving colony population stabilized, the
machine—Gardener—began calculating resources, what the colony could
support. Then it looks like hard decisions were made.
    The first ones made “Outcast” actually had high
scores, especially in terms of skill sets that included survival
skills, construction, surface-greening, even military. Maybe these
were volunteers, or personnel deemed able to make do in the harsher
environment of external shelters (this would have been well before
the atmosphere thickened and the temperatures moderated—even
sheltering in the broken dome wouldn’t have been much better than
original surface conditions, and there certainly wouldn’t have been
such a green bounty).
    As the years pass, the Outcast assignments shifted to
low-scoring individuals: Old, sick, injured, unskilled (or at least
lacking colony-valued skills). First it seemed to be calculated to
maintain a population that the colony could support. But over the
years, the “Residency” population has been getting smaller.
    Colony resource production has also been declining.
Things are breaking down. The colony is slowly dying. I wonder if
they know.
    Meanwhile, the Outcast population has been
increasing, especially in the last decade. They’re thriving.
    I realize I’ve got a “visitor”. The H-K Murphy is on
the other side of the transparency.
    “What is he?”
    “We haven’t determined, sir, I’m sorry,” one of the
medics answers him quickly (and does seem to need to apologize for
whatever failure). “Gardener confirms the DNA record, but obviously
the body doesn’t match this Colonel Ram. Ram was in his early
seventies when the bombs fell.”
    “Is it a Hybrid?”
    “We’re not reading active nanotech. But somehow his
blood is staying oxygenated.”
    “He’s not dead?” Murphy doesn’t sound as nervous
about that as the medics.
    “No heartbeat. No respiration. But scans won’t
penetrate…”
    “Get out of there.”
    “But Gardener, sir…”
    “Out. Now. My expense.” It sounds like Murphy values
his civilians even if his AI doesn’t. (I wonder what “expense” he’s
risking.) And they move, leaving me, sealing me in.
    “No more games,” he directs at me. “I know you can
hear me.”
    “Thank you,” I tell him. “I was getting stiff.”
    Alarms go off as I sit up, swing my legs over the
side of the table so I can face him. I finally let my face and
forehead wounds heal. Murphy manages to keep remarkably calm as my
“fatal” wounds close and vanish. The three security suits that come
rushing in