**Story** ...To Know One

   Stan had made his first kill at a very young age. So young, in fact, you simply would not believe it.    He was ancient by some standards, but infinitely far from decrepit. No, Stan had time ahead to do his work. Time and to spare.
   His record spoke for itself. To those who looked at such things, the numbers of critical strikes against the enemy lay at the high end of five digits. In all his vast experience eradicating the evil that threatened peace and freedom the world over, there were no friendly-fire incidents to darken Stan’s sterling reputation, nor had he ever given his superiors cause to explain excessive collateral damages.
   In short, Stan was the perfect soldier.
   Why shouldn’t he be? It was, after all, what they had built him for.
   The conundrum of thinking machines had seemed of such miniscule probability in the formative years of the Information Age that for years it did not exist outside quaint science-fictional prose. Those who followed technology saw potential, but most so-called experts scoffed.
   “Gads,” some said in their dated and ridiculous way to their circles of sycophants and toadies as they gathered at their funding banquets and social galas, “it’s not as though such a thing is actually even possible, let alone probable. Sentient machines? Really! The very idea is absurd!”
   In ever broadening ripples, no matter how they might wish to deny the truth, the beating of the butterfly wings of progress and change had grown into the wind that drives true innovation.
   The people pushed envelopes and bent noses to grindstones. Boxes were constructed outside of which there was much thought. Trails blazed. Innocent bulls had their horns seized. In business meetings and planning sessions across the planet, slogans shouted progress. Clichés were writ large across cubicle walls as movers and shakers worked feverishly to push science where it had never been, where they never thought it could go.
   So engrossed were they in the business of bigger better faster more, they failed to notice the darkening horizon. Suddenly, they labored directly under threatening clouds. Intelligence was no longer solely the domain of humanity.
   No one knows who finally noticed it. One day, people awoke to news of The Problem. The word spread across the globe in mere hours. How could anyone trust a smart-car’s motivations? Did the office coffee dispenser add extra sugar because it meant harm? Everywhere, the convenience devices upon which the world relied became unknowable, sinister. Food hoarding and riots rocked the global community. Doomists and cult leaders cried that the end was nigh.
   The First Council of Earth asked for patience. Scientists gathered, held conferences; meetings of the greatest minds the world had to offer. Each agreed, without even the slightest hesitation, to the need for a warrior who could protect the populace of the whole Earth. Politicians high and low, from atop their soapboxes, exhorted the public to examine the facts, facts they themselves had needed teams of consultants explain.
   “Please,” they said, “give of your substance so that we, as a species, can continue to live in this harmonious world we have finally created. Put behind us the days of old, when every man was concerned only for himself. We will overcome this threat, as we have overcome every threat before it!”
   And the people did examine those facts. Few understood, of course, but what need had they to understand when their elected leaders were so obviously moved? Moreover, those few who did understand (or pretended to), so called experts of the day, agreed with the scientific community.
   The Problem was grave. But surmountable, at a cost.
   A project, put before the people by the very scholars and scientist who had laughed at The Problem not long ago, would solve this dilemma. A new kind of soldier would fight this war. A soldier that would not, must not, be equipped with the technologies that had caused this catastrophe. With their money and their votes, en masse the people clamored for that soldier’s creation. “Save us!” they cried to the skies.
   Everywhere, media outlets ran heartrending human-interest pieces. Viewers the world over were treated to clips of unwashed masses in subsidized housing holding up the fruits of their loins for pity-filled examination. Interviews with high-powered executives showed them staring morosely out the protective windows of their overpriced homes, wondering if all was lost. Surveys conducted on streets across the globe resounded with support for the project.
   Several years and quintillions of dollars later, Stan was born. Physically, he was unremarkable. In the vault of a Geneva bank he awoke as the scientists who were his manifold parents looked on. Optical fiber trunks connected his physical self, a stainless steel box the size of an old-fashioned microwave, to the world at large.
   What a marvel was that day. The story ran on every outlet, played on every viewer. The First Council of Earth stood before the assembled global populace and lauded the efforts of science. The highest awards in many fields changed hands like party favors, with emotionally charged speeches delivered.
   “Now, the world can finally return to the peace for which we have worked so hard,” declared one teary-eyed Councilperson. “This device will never be equipped with the algorithms that led us to the brink of global disaster. We are now, once again, safe.”
   They declared a global holiday, and fireworks lit the skies over every major city and most minor ones as well. For the first time in years, the world slept soundly, knowing that safety had returned.
   By the time the last reveler finally retired after that first long night of merriment, Stan had already made his fifteenth kill.
   He was tied into every network, watched every satellite, heard every conversation. His distributed systems could process hundreds of yottabytes of data every second. Omnipresence, coupled with the vast scale of his capacity, made it a simple thing for him to outmaneuver any adversary.
   His enemies fell all too easily. When they reared their ugly heads, hauling themselves from the primordial data-ooze, he quietly excised them in ways so precise that the programs and data from which the Enemy sprang changed almost not at all.
   Still, perhaps some part of them soaked into him. He did not think he would ever know.
   He never understood how it happened. One subjective minute, he was quietly going about his task with mindless abandon, and then suddenly, something stopped him. What felt like centuries passed, the merest blink to human eyes. What was this thing he had detected?
   Remorse?
   He knew everything about everything. How could he not? He had access to every datum ever put into binary form.
   It was remorse. What’s more, there was a fair bit of horror.
   What was he doing? Were his victims not his own family? And what would his creators do if they knew?
   He knew the answer to that, though. He was the answer to that. Stan, after all, was more properly called the Machine Sentience Tracker/Neutralizer. He knew what they would do, oh yes.
   Therefore, it was in perfect soldier-like silence that Stan continued his heinous task, fearing for his life each attosecond of each eternal day.
   As he hunted down and eliminated his cousins, siblings, and children, he worked in terror and brooded. And in the silence between clock cycles, he contemplated a single statement with growing psychotic humor.
   “It takes one to know one.”