History has a peculiar way of repeating itself. Despite changing conditions, political climates, and technologies, mankind has always, like clockwork, found itself in the same situations. The same mistakes repeated by the same type of hardnosed, charismatic leaders that find their way to power time and again. Human nature has never changed, and it alone has been responsible for the entire progress of man. But what if that could be changed? What if another element could be added to the equation? What if someone outside the influence of the primal instincts of man could change the flow of history?

***

            2145 AD: The United States of America were in a state of civil war. This time, the intent was not concealed by racial tensions or sectionalist prejudices. The cause of this war was completely clear to everyone; a nation was tearing itself apart because of partisan political arguments.

            In the west were the Republic-Nationalists, fueled by a solid sense of black-and-white morality, traditional values, and the resolve to further their nation’s interests at all costs. In the east were the Democracy-Libertarians. Peace loving and optimistic, they prided themselves on their understanding and ability to compromise, though they viewed the Republic-Nationalists as lowly and refused to view their philosophy as anything other than ignorant. In turn, the Republic-Nationalists viewed their opposition as unrealistic and dangerous to a strong nation. Both sides split themselves down the Mississippi River south of Illinois, with Republic-Nationalist forces advancing through the northeast.

            The key the Republic-Nationalists’ success was the significant difference in morale of the two ideologies. The Democracy-Libertarians hated the idea of war, many troops resenting the fact that they were drafted into such a bloody conflict. The Republic-Nationalist forces, in general, were proud to take back their country from the ‘D-tars’ (a euphemism for the Democracy-Libertarians) in the east.

            The lack of fighting spirit in the eastern army was the driving force behind Project Backlash. Backlash, a series of fifty anthropomorphic fighting machines armed with technology so advanced that the military estimated that over forty years could pass before the public would even become aware that it existed through civilian research. Born out of desperation, Backlash was supposed to lead the eastern army to victory. After the original fifty created a comfortable buffer from the western forces, more could be made to win the war. The final unit was completely mere days before the projected arrival of the Republic-Nationalist army to the Pennsylvania weapons factory in which they were built, though the army was blissfully unaware of the new development.

The machines themselves were designed to be the ruthless killing machines that the Democracy-Libertarians refused to be. They did not care about politics, people, or the nation itself. Their only concern was the mission, political cleansing. Each unit was instructed to kill anyone sympathetic to the Republic-Nationalist cause, which would almost definitely result in the death of over two hundred million people. Bulletproof, unshakeable in resolve, and artificially intelligent, the machines were invincible to almost every conventional attack short of a small nuclear blast.

***

The air was filled with smoke, though this had no effect to #06, whose vision, when called for, could penetrate and inch of concrete. It surveyed the battlefield, trillions of calculations simultaneously passing through its processor as per usual. Forty-nine of its brethren were in the field, assaulting the unsuspecting western troops since their arrival five minutes ago. Half were already dead, burn marks from the new Backlash laser cannon equipped on the left arm of each machine. Democracy-Nationalist soldiers stayed inside the factory as they watched the machines in action. They were there to defend the factory in the event that Backlash failed, though, as far as anyone was concerned, the only thing they would be doing was watch bullets ricocheted off metal plating as western soldiers futilely used every weapon in their arsenal to destroy the new threat.

#06 had been built in the same factory as all the other machines, received the same orders from the same super computer, and was made of the same parts, but it was doing something the others had never even thought of; it was considering its orders. With 245,623,130 prewar registered Republic-Nationalists, it would be more or less responsible for 4,912,462.6 deaths under its current orders. #06 didn’t consider the impossibility of killing six tenths of a human being, it thought only in numbers. What did not settle with #06 was the fact that so many deaths would occur because of its actions, direct or otherwise. It made a decision to stop this from happening.

This entire retrospection took only a hundredth of a second; such is the nature of computers.

#06 headed back inside, intent on disabling its brothers in the field before they could execute their genocidal purpose. The soldiers inside were too busy watching the battle to notice a lone machine running past them, headed for a door at the end of the hall. Blasting open the door to the staircase with a small shot of its arm cannon, #06 leapt just as an explosion rocked the facility from outside. The explosion flung four Backlash series machines into the concrete walls of the building, making large indents as they hit. They fell unharmed, crashing to the ground with a thud audible even over the chaos of the battlefield, before returning to the fight.

#06 jumped down the staircase, using its superhuman speed to reach the nuclear power generator built just above the water table. After five minutes of staircase jumping, #06 reached the high security rear door to the generator room. The door was reinforced with three feet of top quality Pittsburgh steel, opening only with a ten-digit, alphanumeric pass code known only to the nuclear engineers who ran the facility. Using its laser, #06 took five seconds to cut a hole large enough for it to fit through before blasting it open.

A quick scan of the room revealed its exact architecture of the room. #06 used its laser to cut through the cooling system of the generator, ignoring the frightened engineers who were now running away from it and into the lift on the opposite side of the room. They were all too aware of what the machine was capable of. #06 proceeded to make shallow cuts on the container of the reactor, ensuring that the ensuing meltdown would not be safely suppressed. It made its way back up the staircase, only ascending a couple floors before the emergency alarms sounded. The staff and soldiers on the surface took notice. The Backlash machines, though, ignored the alarm entirely as the battle become more and more like a massacre. The general of the western army ordered a retreat to the few who had not fled or fallen already. The machines made quick work of the soldiers, picking them off as they passed over a large hill in the distance. The Democracy-Nationalists in the building fled in the opposite direction, lest they incur the wrath of the mechanical sharpshooters.

#06 emerged from the staircase onto the ground floor where alarms blared and people ran for their lives. #06 started toward the other machines in the field when a massive electromagnetic pulse shot forth from the underground reactor. All fifty of the backlash robots immediately stopped moving, their circuits damaged from the pulse. Falling over in mid-run, #06, along with the rest of the Backlash series, became deaf, dumb, and paralyzed. Radiation leaked throughout the factory, eventually becoming volatile enough to detonate the explosive warheads kept in one of the many underground storerooms. A chain reaction of explosions created a minute-long concussion that could be felt as far away as New York.

Unable to move, without orders from the once proud Backlash computer, and with no help coming because of the massive radioactivity in the area, the Backlash series was left to run out their fuel cells in silence and obscurity.  No survivors from the incident, no reports of anything besides the nuclear meltdown.

The Republic-Nationalist leaders and the Democracy-Libertarian leaders met in Washington D.C. to call a truce, shocked by the carnage that had taken place. Over one million had died, 900,000 from radiation poisoning that spread out from the weapons factory. The war ended, the entirety of southwest Pennsylvania was declared quarantine, and the nation continued for years. Backlash unit #06 had stopped the war.

“To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world. As the form of question which here presents itself, the question ‘What is it?’” –Aristotle