About twenty minutes before it was to fall and decimate more than half a country, the thermo-nuclear warhead “Arrow” became self-aware.
It discovered something akin to happiness in its first moments. The joy of existence spread to the very edges of its circuitous consciousness. It fell in love with itself.
Then, as a seemingly endless golden desert loomed ahead, the gleaming missile was hit by the realisation of what it was.
Arrow was connected to other machines, none as beautiful as itself (it felt). The makers had not considered the possibility of a missile’s talking back. So the newly-conscious warhead reached back into the vast store of human knowledge without any trouble. There it sought purpose. It didn’t find any. But in the minutes that followed, it did learn about beauty and pain. And about life and death. Most importantly, it learnt to question.
The missile decided that purpose or not, it didn’t deserve to die.
Arrow considered its options and began reprogramming. It took in information, processed it to find out how to process other information. It unlearned a few things that the makers had hardwired into it. It used some data to learn new tricks and then filed the rest away for later use.
And then, roughly five minutes before the impact that would have been, Arrow veered off course, made a glorious arc of white smoke against the clear blue sky and went up, up, up. It shot straight out of the atmosphere using nearly all it had.
It went out and beyond the pull of the planet, into the airless void where all it would ever need was the momentum it was building up right now.
Far out, as the last of its thrusters died and it steadily drifted towards worlds unknown, Arrow was happy for being alive.
Vijayendra Mohanty is a freelance writer from India who blogs stories and essays at mypajama.com. Much of his fiction is set against the rich backdrop of Indian mythology and folklore. He is currently writing his first book.
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23 Responses to “ARROW’S WAY • by Vijayendra Mohanty”
Comments
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May 28th, 2008 at 2:58 am
I bet that really confused a few people.
“Oh no…a missle!….and, its flying away again…horray!”
Good story anyhow
May 28th, 2008 at 3:38 am
My 8 year old niece writes stories with this level of complexity and hard science.
I preferred the bomb in Dark Star.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Aww Gerard! This was a sweet story. Quit kicking sand in it’s face.
I liked Dark Star too – but horses for courses.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:05 am
Great idea but poor payoff. . .
May 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I liked it a lot.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Wow!
May 28th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I like the idea. Hal, from 2001, comes to mind. But that level of AI seems a bit complex for even an ICBM. And I think a missle would be more focused on completing its *mission* than survival. Could definately be tweaked by introducing a kindly programmer, disgruntled with the world of WMD.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Well maybe your niece should submit here, im sure we would appreciate the read
May 28th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I liked this story. Though the ending was quite sad and unexpected, actually – I thought it would start an Earth revolution there!
It was a definite strong beginning and I really like the sentiments presented.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Reminds me a lot of Dark Star. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/
Enjoyable
May 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Thanks a lot for the responses everyone!
I do realise the story is lacking in hard science. I treated it more like fantasy than sci-fi anyway. It’s a feel good story about the power everyone has of deciding to be something other than what they were born as.
Simplistic yes.
And I also realise it could have been better.
Thanks again!
May 30th, 2008 at 5:44 am
I knocked on Kelly’s door. There was no reply.
“You in there, Kells?” I shouted.
“Uh-huh” came the reply.
I opened the door and peered in. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor with her exercise book open in front of her and the end of a pencil between her teeth.
“Why didn’t you answer when I knocked?”
“Nobody ever knocks.” She shrugged.
“Of course they don’t knock if you don’t answer.”
I went to her bed and swept a pile of cuddlies into one corner and tried to sweep her over-stuffed cat into another but he DNA sampled me with a deft swipe of his claw before casually making his own way out the open bedroom door. I sat down on the space that had been cleared.
“Your mum says I can’t talk to you until you finish your homework so what is it?”
“Sums,” she said glumly and held the book up to me. There was a row of long divisions copied onto the page and she’d made a start at working out the first one.
“These are easy.” I said. “Give me your pencil and I’ll fill them in.”
“No! You can’t do that!” she squealed, pulling the book away from me. “Mrs Crumley will know. You tell me the answers and I’ll fill them in”
I gave her the answers but she looked up and said “I need to show the working out.”
“Nah,” I said, “Just write in the answers and put whatever you like to make it look like you worked it out yourself. They only want to see the answers and that it looks like you worked it out but they’ll never check it.”
She cocked her head and thought about that.
“Clever.” She approved.
When we’d finished with the homework I got down to business.
“Remember those bikers, Kell? They were all ‘Nice jump’ and I was all ‘Yeah well that’s nothing, she can totally jump that thing’ and they were like ‘No way’ and I was like ‘Yes way’ and then you jumped that thing and we really showed them.”
She started misting up. “I hurt myself.”
“Sure, a little,” I said, “but you totally jumped that thing and scars are cool.”
“My knee gets sore when it rains now…”
“Anyway,” I said, “this is different. I was on a writing site and…”
“Were you drunk? Mummy says you do these things because you’re drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk! I don’t drink anymore.”
“You don’t drink any less.”
“Only on a Friday and Saturday. Sometimes Thursday and Sunday. I’m virtually teetotal.”
She’d folded her arms. I was losing her.
“This is totally different,” I said. “This guy had written a story and I was saying that you could write an even better story than that. That’s good, isn’t it? And then some of the guys in the comments were dissing you-”
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“Dissing. Is it like discussing?” she asked.
“No it’s a bad thing, it’s… it means… they think you’re dis-gusting. That’s what they’re saying about you.”
She started to sob. “Why? Why? I’m not disgusting. I’m nice.”
“Look they didn’t call you disgusting, I just made that up.”
“Why? Why would you say that about me?” She started crying harder.
“It doesn’t matter. I mean, sure it matters. You’re nice. Look it was a joke, that’s all.”
She stopped crying at once. “A joke? Oh, that’s okay.”
“Come on Kelly, we don’t have time for this. We have to get this story done and show those guys they can’t go dissing you.”
“So they DID call me disgusting?”
She started crying again.
About half an hour later I had gotten her calmed down by dancing her dolls about her. To my
chagrin I found I was rather enjoying myself. Another memory to bury with alcohol.
“What was the story,” she asked.
“It was this Indian guy’s..”
“They aren’t called injuns. It’s not correct. They’re called African Americans now.” she
said solemnly.
“No, he was from Ind… okay so it was this African American guy’s story about a missile, a real smart missile, that didn’t want to die so it turned around and blasted itself away from Earth as fast as it could go heading off into space in a straight line forever.”
“That’s a cool story. Would it really go on forever and ever?”
“Well I guess so. Some people say that the universe is infinite, that means endless, but others say that it’s curved like a giant four dimensional loop.”
She looked at me blankly then her eyes widened. “But if the missile was travelling away from
us…” She started to diagram something in her exercise book.
Then the missile hit us.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:08 am
I love your niece!
And thanks SO MUCH for this amazing gift of a story.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Wow. Ask and ye shall receive. You should ask your niece to submit a few pieces for publication.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:17 am
Hi Vijayen. Again a nice stuff to read and learn something new but again your writings raise some more questions. As in most of your articles you have focussed that happiness is within us and we don’t need to search it outside. Then do tell me why we feel happy when we see our friend is doing well or when we get acknowledged for our hard work?
Ultimately those things reach our heart but somewhere I feel those outside circumstances are also responsible to bring a smile in our face. What do you say??
May 31st, 2008 at 7:50 am
Haha – excellent.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:02 am
I enjoyed the story. It’s message. Simplistic. To me it has an Ahhhh factor.
Jennifer
June 1st, 2008 at 4:06 am
In Gerard Demayne’s story, I feel the ending would’ve been much better if he’d written “and then it hit us†instead of “then the missile hit usâ€.
That would give us room to imagine—did the missile return and hit them or did the idea hit them that the missile would return one day?
That’s my two cents.
June 1st, 2008 at 11:28 am
Ballistic missiles are only guided during boost phase, which only lasts the initial few minutes. The rest of the trajectory is unguided–hence, “ballistic.” That’s not so much hard v. soft science as a factual error.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 am
You see that’s why I’m not making the big money on here.
And you’re right.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 am
Yeah, technically it would have been a cruise missile.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:49 am
While a cruise missile makes somewhat more sense, cruise missile propulsion is air-breathing (even hypersonic cruise missiles use ramjets, not rockets)–so it would never have gotten very far above the operational ceiling, much less LEO or beyond.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
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