Part Three- Warnings And Weapons

The UDC realized they needed two things to survive: better warning and better weapons.

They already had the weapons. Technology that was on the drawing board before the zombie apocalypse decimated the earth, was still viable. The mechs. Massive, armored combat robots designed to fit around a human pilot and mimic the pilot’s every move and action. However, there were design flaws with the control interface.

Developing the warning wasn’t very hard. The Reaper chip came about in a burst of brilliance.

That same burst of brilliance showed the chip to be the answer to the mech pilots’ control issues.

***

The beauty of the zombie hordes was once they ran out of food they simply starved to death. This allowed the human race to bounce back from almost certain extinction.

The virus, however, did not die with the re-animated corpses. It floated in the air, waiting for the living to expire and provide the perfect host. It was a patient, indestructible virus.

Once the Reaper chip was invented and implanted in every living person, humanity had an early warning system. Trackers locked onto the recently deceased and squads dispatched to dispose of the threat.

But nothing is ever that simple.

***

The Reaper chip was to be the saving grace of the human race. It was to solve all of the unreported deaths, the overlooked, the lost, the underbelly.

But, that wasn’t to be.

In theory, a person died and their Reaper chip activated, alerting the authorities. It also sent a lethal shock to the cerebral cortex, frying the brain and adding another safeguard that the dearly departed stayed dearly departed.

But, in order for mech pilots to connect with their mech’s computer, they needed that feature disabled.

Eventually, it was and the door for the dead mechs was opened. Wide.

***

The mechs came online ten years after the Reaper chip. They were almost a direct extension of that technology, working on the same principal of cerebral and computer integration.

The first mech pilot died a quick, painful death, his cerebellum frying like an oyster in hot oil. It was chalked up to equipment failure.

The second mech pilot died screaming into his com that his “brain is on fucking fire!”. His eyeballs melted in his head, while grey matter oozed from his ears.

The scientists and engineers went back to the drawing board. The UDC waited patiently for their army.

***

Try as they might, none of the scientists or programmers could retain the Reaper chips’ brain frying features and allow it to fully connect with the mech’s computer systems without killing the pilots.

They finally had to face the fact that the feature would need to be disabled, still allowing the pilots’ vital signs to be monitored and tracking signature to be located, but no longer capable of administering a final brain death.

A single assistant composed a memo about the possible risks of pilot death while still connected to their mech.

The assistant soon became a silent test subject.

***

A mech and its pilot were designed to be one organism. The mech’s AI and the pilot’s consciousness were to meld easily, allowing the pilot to control the mech without any delay or hesitation. If the pilot moved, the mech moved with it like a suit of armor, but with hydraulic assistance.

This was the worry of what would one day be called the Lost Memo: that the mech and pilot were too intertwined, too enmeshed, too complete. Mechs did not know the difference between life or death. A pilot was a pilot, whether living or undead.

Monsters were born.

***

The day the mechs came online was hailed as the end of the zombie war, the politicians crowed.

No longer would humanity have to risk sending in hundreds of soldiers against thousands of undead, hoping not to be overrun and infected then turned themselves.

Now, just two or three specially trained mech pilots could take their massive robotic war machines into the middle of the undead masses and lay waste.

Soon battles were won in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.

Of course, it all went horribly wrong the moment the first pilot died while still operating his mech.