ANA Reborn by Carl Facciponte - HTML preview
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Chapter 34
he note delivered to the base was written in T little boy’s handwriting and broken English. It said only to meet on the main street at two o’clock, and that it was about the widow Hala.
Lance smiled. He knew the note was from Terek. “He’s a cute little guy,” Lance absentmindedly said aloud. “But he did mention his mother. I wonder if she is starting to take interest in me. She should. I’ve been sending gifts for several months. This should be interesting.
Wonder what the little scamp is up to. He always grins when he sees me.”
At two o’clock, Terek saw Lance crossing the main street in town and ran to meet him in the dusty center.
"Thank you for coming, Mister Lance," he said, raising his arms for a hug. Lance knelt and hugged the child. He could smell the curry and garlic on Terek's clothes. A smile spread across 265
Lance's face. He had never held a child before. "Someday, I ought to have one of these.
Someday, but not now." He gave the boy another squeeze.
"Mister Lance, you helped my family after my father got killed. You gave us money to buy food and clothes. Someday I would like to be a big hero like you and be remembered by my people."
Lance's ego swelled.
The boy whispered into Lance's ear, "I know I will be famous and will be talked about by my people. Your bombs killed my father. You will die at my hands now! Allah Akbar!" he said as his little thumb depressed the red button hidden inside his left sleeve.
The explosion shattered windows in businesses on both sides of the street. A nearby parked car incinerated as its gas tank, ruptured from the blast's force, ignited. Shrapnel pock-marked the brick fronts of the closest stores.
Several passers-by lay dead. More were wounded and screaming. A hole in the road appeared where Lance had been kneeling with the little boy. Watching from sixty feet away, Ana and Rhett were blown into the side of a building. The 266
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blast deactivated them for almost a full minute.
The explosion and resulting shrapnel tore their clothing in places, but their skin integrity held, and they remained otherwise unhurt.
Ana rebooted first and immediately began to implement the plan she and Rhett designed for a catastrophic
situation.
She
blocked
any
communication from themselves to the central monitoring station in New York. The data receivers in NYC showed a total interruption of any output from the two AIs, including brain waves. From the monitors perspective, they had flat-lined.
There were no traces of Terek and Lance other than bits of wet matter and scraps of charred clothing scattered over a hundred-foot circle.
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