A Canticle for Krizhevsky: Part 1

Finis Voluntatis Tua (v0.3.12.2012b)

Generated by the author with Stable Diffusion, 2025.

Today, CENTCOM

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle's stifling roar died as Second Lieutenant Jonny Merkur's driver cut the engine. The oppressive desert sun already had him on the verge of passing out as he stood with his head out of the turret. His driver, on the other hand, was crammed into a narrow seat next to what felt like a magma plume about to explode through the engine wall. The turret batteries could run the comms and minimal scanning for about two hours before they'd have to start the engine back up again, giving Owens a brief reprieve. Merkur's gunner “Chef” took the cue to slip out through the hell hole behind his seat. He dragged his sweat-soaked body to the back of the track for a nap, trailing a smell of unwashed socks and cheap body spray. Vehicle checkpoints were mind-numbingly dull work, and the turret was too cramped for both to just sit there. Besides, in three hours, it'd be Chef’s turn to stand watch.

At first, Merkur found the abrupt silence uncomfortably isolating. Muted by the crew’s noise-canceling headsets, it only served to amplify his other senses, shifting the heat to center stage in his mind. He began the regular cycle of “Bradley Air Conditioning” — ducking inside the turret until one was thoroughly caked in sweat and then standing back up so even the tiniest arid breeze would feel, briefly, like nirvana. Drink lots of water and repeat. For three hours.

Merkur’s mind quickly bored, and he searched the turret for the small device he'd been given before the patrol. Ostensibly it was just another oversized smartphone, but a staff officer at brigade headquarters had handed it to Merkur on his way out with instructions to “Teach it.”

He pressed the power button on the side and a bright blue 'GAIL' logo briefly flashed before the device finished booting up. Standing, he laid the tablet on the top of the turret. Then, as an afterthought, he balanced his boonie cap over two periscopes to shield the device from the direct sun, which was sure to cook it in this heat.

He took a few moments to scan the line of cars cautiously advancing through the concrete and concertina wire serpentine in front of him. A chirp in his headset caught his attention. Lifting his hat, he saw the words “General AI Learner” perform a short-animated dance on the screen before disappearing and being replaced with a small teal dot in the center. Everything in the Army is an acronym.

The dot pulsed briefly like a slow heartbeat for a few seconds before it abruptly started talking with a digitized female voice. “I am GAIL. What are we doing today?” Merkur was used to talking to his devices at home, but it felt odd to do it in a tactical situation. On the other hand, she did sound nice. Maybe that's why they always use a female voice. Merkur tapped the screen with his finger and began poking through the settings menu, quickly finding the “voice options.” As he scrolled through the list, he was surprised to find a few celebrity voices, including several from the latest Marvel release. But he was disappointed to find, despite his taps, they all remained greyed out. Of course, the army didn’t buy the full package.

“What are we doing today?” GAIL repeated.

“Hello Gail. Today, we are doing vee-see-pee ops,” he replied, taking some offense at the lifting we was doing in GAIL's question.

“What are V-C-P ops?” she retorted after a short but perceptible pause.

Merkur grinned. “Vehicle Check Point operations,” he clarified. He mentally amended his previous rule, except when things in the Army are initialisms.

“Who you talking to up there?” Owens’ Oklahoma drawl broke through on the internal comms.

“Nobody,” answered Merkur. “It’s that new AI thingy they gave us on our way out.”

“Well turn off your mic, I’m trying to get some rack.”

Merkur flipped the switch forward on his helmet and glanced down at GAIL, whose blue light was bouncing up and down like a metronome on the screen.

“We are inspecting vehicles before they enter the city, correct?” GAIL asked.

“Yes,” Merkur responded, a little surprised.

“Location identified. Scanning.”

He looked down at the screen and saw a map of his current location. Abruptly, the screen shifted to a live feed from one of the platoon's quadcopters and began to highlight all of his platoon soldiers and vehicles with blue Xs and boxes. Meanwhile the line of civilian vehicles was covered in yellow boxes. Damn, that was quick. How’d this thing tap into our drone?

Whatever this was, it wasn't made by the typical Army contractor. This was… cool. Maybe even useful.

“What is our role in … ‘VCP ops’?” GAIL asked. The way the device emphasized the quote struck Merkur as unusual. This wasn't like talking to your normal digital assistant. There was… something in the inflection. The lieutenant thought for a moment before replying.

“Well, our job is to shoot a veebid before it blows up the gate,” he replied, still a little miffed at how GAIL was suddenly inviting herself along on the mission.

“What is a VEEE-BID?”

“A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” Merkur spoke in the sing-song rhythm every soldier adopted when explaining to newbs. When GAIL didn't immediately reply, he filled in another pause with, “It means a car bomb.”

GAIL's teal light pulsed briefly before the screen's face switched to the overhead view of his drone again. She must be using some sort of cell data, he thought before catching himself. She?

“Why are we not [here], then?”

Merkur looked down at the live feed from his drone and saw a blinking box about 50 meters forward of his position and on the other side of the road. The response stunned him for a moment. He thought GAIL had paused because it didn’t know what a VBIED was. He knew why their Bradley wasn't there, but how did GAIL even know to suggest it?

“Twenty-five mike-mike tends to rabbit, so we have to pay attention to the ess-dee-zees”. He was trying to decide which question she would ask first but was cut off when she answered both herself.

“25mm is the primary round of the M242 Bushmaster chain gun and principal weapon on an M2A4 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.” Another brief pause before GAIL began reciting, “SDZs are ‘surface danger zones’ and are the geometry that a projectile may potentially strike if fired out to maximum range.”

Merkur found himself distracted from scanning by the device laying on his turret. What is this? Had it just told him something it learned on its own, so he didn't have to?

“That's correct. There's a guard tower in the SDZ from that position, and we don't want to shoot guard towers. There're friendlies there.”

“Would this be a - bad decision?” The last clause came out as its own phrase, emphasized by GAIL.

He watched the screen as the tower and its soldiers were covered with blue Xs.

“Yes,” the Lieutenant agreed, a little dumbstruck. GAIL's ball of light pulsed slowly before abruptly switching back to the drone feed.

“What about this position?”

Merkur looked down as a new position on the other side of the road was flagged with a new box overlay blinking steady in position despite the drone's slow patrol through the sky.

“Well, if you look in that SDZ, you'll see that large two-story brick building. That's the local women's college. We really don't want aich-eee rounds rabbiting in there.”

“HE, or ‘High Explosive’ rounds”, GAIL responded. “This is another - bad decision?”

“Yes, GAIL, very bad.” Merkur felt himself becoming a bit exasperated. He'd worked through all of this before he'd put his Bradley where he did, and having to explain it over again felt tedious. Suddenly he recalled his grizzled platoon sergeant's reply when he'd offer the GAIL to him. “Why would I want to train another lieutenant? I already have one. That's enough.”

GAIL was silent for a few minutes. Merkur took the pause to scan the slowly lengthening line of cars outside the VCP. He also opted to duck back inside the turret again, to build up more sweat. He brought the tablet with him and watched as the screen began flashing boxes and the hypothetical SDZs for each all over the map.

After a minute or so, GAIL declared, “You have found the optimal position.”

“Thanks Gail,” he replied, with just a touch of sarcasm. In part, he felt validated; but he also found it annoying that a computer was telling him how to do his job. Is this what it feels like to be a non-commissioned officer?

Several minutes passed as the sweat accumulated. The trick was to always wait just a little longer than was comfortable. If you rushed standing up, then the spine-tingling reprieve of the wind was too brief to be satisfying. So, when he was unbearably caked in sweat, he counted slowly in his head another one hundred and twenty seconds before standing back up and placing GAIL back under his boonie.

“I have run multiple simulations and the time it would take for you to respond to an identified VBIED is less than .5 seconds, and the anticipated minimum surface danger area for even a small VBIED is over 250 meters. I assess the odds of you successfully preventing an attack on this VCP at 1 in 167,452,749.5423.”

Lieutenant Merkur just stared at the screen as the teal ball blinked, apparently awaiting a reply.

“I'm getting tired of your shit, Gail,” Merkur replied. Fuck this is going to be a long day. The sun beat down on the platoon, as vultures slowly circled overhead.