A White Helmet and a Child in the Rain
We have spent the last few days in the trenches, waiting for the others; the rain falls on us ruthlessly and turns the plain ahead of us into a veritable swamp. I had just decided to order the departure of a patrol when one of my soldiers flinches suddenly and waves to me: a silhouette, faintly visible through the dense squalls of rain, has appeared in his shooting sector. I signal him to wait a little longer and he acknowledges. He leans on the butt of his weapon aiming toward the uncertain shape in front of him. He edges closer, and now we can tell clearly: the person has a white helmet on his head; therefore, he is an enemy.
"Fire!" I whisper when the shape gets close enough, and in the same moment the enemy soldier falls facedown in the mud.
I summon two soldiers and they rush out of the trenches, grab the arms of the fallen soldier, and draw him to my feet. Yes, my soldier aimed well: the enemy has no visible wound. I bend towards him, raise his jacket, and with the control key, I open his chest. I pull out the program card, tear it apart, and throw it away while my soldiers are grinning with satisfaction; then, I replace it with one of our cards. One of my soldiers brings a black helmet, puts it on soldier's head, and wipes the mud off his face. Then I activate him. He rises unsteadily, and when he sees me, he salutes. I like to have many soldiers under my command. A specialist in psychorobotics from the Maintenance Center told me once, when he was in a good mood and felt like talking, that this pleasure of mine was the residual of a human trait, carefully bred and cultivated in commanders: Pride.
That's why we feel so good with more soldiers under our command. He also told me that this pride usually makes us good officers and keeps us from risking a soldier's life unnecessarily. I realized only then why I let my soldiers fire only when the enemy gets close enough to aim precisely into the armed button in the middle of the chest, the one that cuts off the vital functions.
Unfortunately, not all the soldiers hit the button, and then our bullets tear off big scraps of the enemy soldiers. We don't know how to put them back, and those spoiled like this remain abandoned in front of the trenches. At one time, the damaged robot soldiers were taken to the Maintenance Center where there were people who knew how to make them functional again. After the escalation of the war and the use of nuclear weapons, we found fewer and fewer people at the Center, and those who remained seemed too weak to handle the dismembered robots. The specialist I spoke to said that probably all mankind will perish because the radiation level greatly exceeded even the most pessimistic estimates.
"But don't be upset about it," he tried to joke. "I'm sure you are going to win the war."
"What makes you say that?" I asked him, puzzled.
He suddenly turned pale, closed his eyes, and answered me no more. I thought he died, like all the others, but in the end, he opened his eyes whispering:
"A matter of logic, my dear, a matter of logic.... In such a gloomy world, so full of smoke and ash, in which it rains all the time, soldiers with white helmets have absolutely no chance... they are too visible. This much you could have thought for yourself."
He breathed heavily several times and then added:
"When you win, you'd better hurry to enjoy your victory because the sun won't leave you too much time... and there is hardly anybody to take care of the Recharge Stations."
"By the way, what is happening with the sun? Why can nobody see it anymore?" I asked him then, but he didn't answer because he started to vomit and then he lost consciousness. He never came back again.
