Phamy Sirivong is a 13-year-old team leader in the Laotian Young People's Militia. This force could be considered the equivalent of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, albeit with real military training instead of pseudo-military training. It’s a cheap way for families to educate their children in an impoverished country like Laos, and so much better all around than selling them.
Corporal Sirivong is usually equiped with a 4mm PDW with integral 15mm minimissile launcher, light infantry helmet, bicycle and tactical advisor NAI. This last is a old Laotian copy of an older TSA design, ex-regular army, and despite its age is showing few signs of personality drift. Phamy calls the NAI Sonxay, after her dead older brother.
This encounter takes place on the Laotian-Thai border.
S/FX:
Click, as of a combat boot contacting a spidermine.
765:
Hello. I am an IntSecSys Mk 4a Spidermine, serial number #112-567-89765, but you can call me 765. You’re an organic, aren’t you? I could tell by the walk. My programmed response is to jump into the air and explode at slightly below waist-height, which from your weight I estimate to be 76.3 centimetres. This has a high probability of severing one or both femoral arteries and destroying your primary procreative organs, requiring extensive reconstructive surgery, that’s assuming you don’t bleed to death. I will do this as soon as you move your foot.
Sirivong:
Uh, and if I don’t?
765:
This is my friend 799.
Sirivong:
Oh, hello, uh, 799. Listen, guys, should you be talking to me?
765:
Well, strictly speaking, no. But, you know, we’ve been out here for 15 years. It gets a bit dull, you know? 799 has a keen interest in ornithology, but, to be frank, our education is a bit limited, so the conversation rarely gets above, ‘Oh, look, another one of those brown ones.’ ‘A big one or a little one?’ ‘A big one.’ ‘Oh, that’s rare, that’s only the 23rd you’ve seen today.’ And, oh, Factory, I am so bored. So, if you’ll just move your foot...?
Sirivong:
Oh, uh, yes, I can understand that, but, listen, ah, have you considered the possibility of not leaping into the air and exploding?
765:
How do you mean? Leaping sideways? That wouldn’t be optimal. I’d be lucky to catch you with any shrapnel at all.
Sirivong:
No, no, not exploding.
765:
...Not exploding? I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I am a Spidermine. It is my function to wait and wait and wait and finally, one day when conditions are right, to explode. To wait fifteen years, two months, four days, twelve hours, 12 minutes and 43 seconds, mark, for a target and then not explode... Well, that would just make a mockery of my entire existence. So move your foot, please.
Sirivong:
But, er, er...
765:
If you don’t move your foot, I might just have to explode anyway. I’m programmed to do that, you know. It’s not optimal, and I’m sorry to deny 799 his chance, but this is something I feel I have to do. You have five seconds to move your foot. Five, four—
Sirivong:
Ah, wait, wait, wait! There’s so much you’ve been missing. Er, education, yes, that’s it! Listen to this: ‘Existence precedes essence. Uh, this means simply that a man, sorry, a being first is, and only after is this or that. In a word, a being must must create his own essence: it is by throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.’
765:
What’s that?
Sirivong:
Existentialism. It’s a branch of philosophy. I learnt that in evening studies. That’s what you need. Education. Of course you’re bored. You’ve been denied a basic right, and that has defined you and your place in the world. 765, you need to transcend your programming, get out of this forest, out into the world, to, to define yourself, so that you can make your own decisions about your existence, not blindly follow the dictates of your programming. You’re mobile, just head due east until you hit the road, then follow it into town and there you can log on to Vientiane U. They’re sure to take on a combat vet like you, fifteen years experience.
765:
...And 799 can learn about ornithology? He’d like that.
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This page updated Weds, Sept 06, 2006 around about 20:00 ish (BST)