Siege by Mark Alpert

perform this two-for-one trick, I copied all the memory files in my Quarter-bot and transferred the copies to the V-22’s neuromorphic control unit. Then I set up a radio link between the two machines that allows them to exchange huge amounts of data, constantly sending signals back and forth.
    Basically, my mind is stretched between the aircraft and the robot, and I’m looking at the world from two perspectives at once. The Osprey’s sensors are showing me the suburban landscape of Westchester County below us, and at the same time I’m using the Quarter-bot’s cameras to see my fellow Pioneers inside the plane’s cabin.
    There’s a great advantage to this setup: if either the aircraft or the robot is blown to bits, my mind will survive in the other machine. The strategy has its limitations, though. You can’t occupy two machines at once unless they’re in close radio contact with each other. And you can’t guarantee your survival by storing a backup copy of your memories in a safe place. Because human minds are so complex, they can be stored only in neuromorphic circuits that are active all the time. So if I copy my files to another machine without maintaining radio contact, I’ll simply create a clone of Adam Armstrong that’ll start thinking its own thoughts and making its own decisions. And I definitely don’t want to do that.
    After a couple of minutes, we fly over Tarrytown, cruising a thousand feet above the trees and houses. As I aim the V-22’s sensors at the ground, I use my Quarter-bot’s cameras to glance at Shannon, who’s standing motionless near the plane’s cockpit. Although I’ve been trying hard to control my feelings since we left New Mexico, I can’t stop thinking about what she said. You hurt me, Adam. You proved me wrong. I can’t stop picturing Shannon’s human face on her Diamond Girl’s screen, the tear sliding down her cheek. But I force myself to put the image back into my long-term memory. I can’t let it interfere with the mission. Just like Shannon, I need to push all those feelings aside.
    Five miles south of Yorktown Heights I see clusters of flashing blue lights on the roads. The local police have set up roadblocks on all the highways and streets leading to my hometown. South of the roadblocks, lines of vehicles and crowds of people are fleeing the evacuation zone, but to the north I see no movement at all. All the cars in Yorktown Heights are stopped on the streets, hundreds of them smashed into guardrails and trees, hundreds more tangled in ugly pileups at the intersections. And when I switch my sensors to the infrared range, I see human bodies everywhere, sprawled on the town’s sidewalks and parking lots and driveways. I can measure the temperature of the bodies by how brightly they glow in infrared, and they’re all far below 98.6 degrees. They’ve been cooling for hours.
    It’s horrifying. It’s painful beyond belief. Sigma annihilated my hometown. It slaughtered everyone.
    General Hawke had suspected that Sigma might go after the families of the Pioneers. To protect our relatives, the Army moved all of them months ago to secret safe houses in the western United States. But no one expected anything like this. I point my Quarter-bot’s cameras at Shannon, who grew up just a mile away from me and is probably even more horrified than I am. She was so active in school and church that she was friends with just about everyone in Yorktown Heights. Now those friends and neighbors lie motionless on the ground, some of them stretched on the lawns outside their homes, others curled and slumped on the street corners. The terrible images gouge into my circuits.
    And the sight isn’t just horrible—it’s baffling. This biological attack doesn’t make any sense. Although we don’t know yet how Sigma spread the anthrax germs, I’m assuming the AI could’ve