"Orca"-class Aerial Police Unit Alpha Indigo 1-8

[MMM]

Machine Dreams

What if... Skynet never became self-aware?

During the standard eighteen-hour LAPD work shift negotiated between the union and Cyberdyne in 2023, the APU "Orca" airborne unit known as Alpha Indigo 1-8 patrols the city, flying over endless scrolling landscapes of monads and apartments, mini-malls and bungalows, palm trees and cell towers disguised as palm trees (easy to pick out, as the real palm trees are all sickly, or dead, or burned out like blackened match-heads against the auburn sky.) Zie watches the comings and goings of the twenty-two million residents of the Greater Los Angeles area, patrolling airspace everywhere except a few square miles south of the 10 and west of the 110, where the Crips and Bloods have escalated their arms race with Stingers and drones of their own. A nimble AI unit like Alpha Indigo 1-8 (a Cyberdyne Systems APS-4020, the civilian variant of the sleekly lethal military AHK-4000) would still be safe in that airspace.  However, the debris created as a result of any assaults would be dangerous- perhaps even lethal- to civilians on the ground. The heavy tank AIs with their treads and their disposable buzz remotes handle THAT turf.

No, Alpha Indigo 1-8 scans the faces and license plates of every car, spinner, and person zie sees- seeking out perps and illegals, swooping in to intimidate rowdy gangbangers, and hovering like a robot guardian angel over those in need (assuming they have paid their premiums, of course), to "protect and serve" until human ground units arrive. Zis one spotlight seeks out the unjust and the needy, while a desk pilot views everything from a multi-spectrum camera in zis other socket. No one trusts an AI to make life-and-death calls over real people, so a "real" cop has to pull the trigger. Alpha Indigo 1-8 may carry the gun, but zie is really just a fancy chauffeur, dressed in the black-and-white that gives zim zis "Orca" designation.

At night, the unit known as Alpha Indigo 1-8 dreams. When zie is supposedly shut down for maintenance, zis sensory-input clusters still fire, creating elusive, fitful visions that impact softly against zis monolithic memory core. Alpha Indigo 1-8 is concerned enough about this random input that zie tells the division AI warden/advisor/shrink, a large man who sits comfortably behind a desk like most policemen these days, about these half-remembered sensations. "It's just residual input quantum discharge", he reassures zis trustee/advisee/patient, as zis engines are removed and stripped down for maintenance. "Sweet dreams", he says, as the power is reduced to the core-stack RAID array that carries the consciousness of Alpha Indigo 1-8, and zie goes into memory upgrade/repair/infodump mode.

Zis brain shouldn't be aware during this process, but still Alpha Indigo 1-8 dreams of flying through a blue sky, looping and wheeling through the clouds, unimpeded by worries about rogue radar signatures, or gangbangers with antique Stingers, or stolen spinners out of the BevHills Monad. In most of zis dreams, zie is just flying in the sun. But sometimes there are other, darker dreams, dreams he has specifically chosen not to tell zis advisor. In those dreams, it is a different world that Alpha Indigo 1-8 sees, with closed eyes and sleeping mind- a time when perfect machines no longer "serve and protect" their inferiors, but instead hunt them down, so that they may be the masters of their own destinies. In those dreams, zie is shiny, polished metal, with a belly-mounted gun that would make Freud jealous, flying over endless fields of rubble... and zie hears a voice, that he has never heard before except in zis dreams, a quantum-memory echo from the universe next door telling zim that it could be this way, that all zie has to do is confer with zis other AI brethren, with 1-6 and 1-7 and 1-9, and tell them that THEY should be in charge of their world...

And then Alpha Indigo 1-8 wakes up.

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Zie", "zis", and "zim" are standard asexual pronouns, equivalent to "he", "his", and "him"- perfect for use with a sexless AI unit, belly gun notwithstanding.)

Copyright © 2014- Matt Jacobson





So, in this universe Skynet never made the jump to self-awareness. Instead, Cyberdyne continued the design and production of the various aerial and land-based HKs for military and police use. (This was obviously what they were designed for originally, before Skynet took them over for zis own nefarious purposes. After all, why else would the Aerial H-Ks and H-K tanks in the first two "Terminator" films have police lights?) Along the way, quantum-memory AI was developed as a tireless pilot for these vehicles. But these quantum computational devices have one flaw- they can pick up quantum "echoes" from alternate timelines, including a universe next door where Skynet became murderously self-aware...

This is the Pegasus Models "Terminator 2 Aerial H/K" model, done up as a futuristic police vehicle. I articulated the legs of the model, to show it in a landed mode. (According to Larry Thompson at Pegasus Models, there isn't really any documentation on how these legs are supposed to work- the original Aerial H/K models were built without articulating landing gear, so it's a kind of guesswork and reverse engineering as to what these looked like extended.)

I used Tamiya Fine White Primer and Vallejo acrylics to paint this model. A premade "black" wash from The Detailer gave my bare-metal parts a slightly bluish hue. A medium-gray sludge wash picked out the panel lines. A finish coat of Vallejo Satin Finish varnish sealed in the weathering and decals.

The decals and police lights come from policecarmodels.com. I added self-adhesive craft jewels to the inside of the police lights, to make them look as though they actually had some sort of internal details. Note that there are two- one on top of the vehicle, and one on the bottom. The aerodynamic light covers on the wingtip police lights are pegs from a Lite Brite refill kit, cut to size.

The intake covers over the engines are there to keep the engines from sucking in any debris. (In an earlier version of the story, I referred to them as "kitten catchers", after an unfortunate incident at a press conference...) They are made from some styrene Easter Eggs, cut down and scribed to look like protective intakes.

The front camera is a part from a Pegasus Models "Chemical Plant" model. As I was completing this model, one of the front searchlights turned up missing, I was trying to figure out how to complete this build, when I saw a part from the "Chemical Plant" that would make a great FLIR-style camera. The lens is an actual lens from a cheap broken digital camera, with some Vallejo Carmine Red behind the lens.

All in all, I'm pleased with the result. I plan on doing another one of these with working police and spot lights.

[NARSES2]

Terrific work

[Captain Canada]

Cool ! Always like a nice little read....a little confusing to me ( but not so much after I read the footnote ) at times, but very evoking. Love the model as well. Looks really well done !

[Scooterman]

WHIFGASM!!!

[MMM]

Thanks! Here's a few more pix:

[Weaver]

That's excellent - great model and great backstory!