Deserts of Fire Read online

  This is how weapons of mass destruction stopped being a deterrent against war and became a pretext for it. One of the many horrible inventions that had pushed Tristan Tzara to try and break with Western Civilization had been exported to the Middle East in the ’80s, and used by Iraq against Iran, and against the Kurds. Time had to pass (and not coincidently, the cold war had to end) before these weapons were treated as humanitarian or security issues. These weapons of mass destruction were only bad enough to require intervention after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

  In 2003 weapons of mass destruction had an entirely different character. The fear of these weapons wasn’t the old cold war fear that started in the pit of one’s stomach and ended in existential dread, but rather one based on creeping paranoia. Today’s weapons of mass destruction can be hidden away. Using such weapons doesn’t light up the sky or cause a permanent winter. Their use can happen in secret and accusations of the production or use of such weapons can never be entirely refuted.

  What this means is that today weapons of mass destruction don’t loom on the horizon, but rather define the present. A chemical smell, a weird symptom, or the possibility that your sneeze and sore throat will send you to an early grave; these things are present right now. There need not be any final countdown.

  After the end of the cold war, and the 9/11 attacks, the apocalypse shrank. It turned out that the apocalypse could be stretched out, like an eternal present rather than a future end. The end of the world became something that we were living with rather than something we feared might happen. These fears were morally equivalent to, and as unthinkable as, the old nuclear conflagration, but they could be reacted against in the present, and maybe even defeated.

  This change in the nature of the weapon of mass destruction meant that it was suddenly okay to get the facts wrong in a way we would never have allowed ourselves to in the days of Bert the Turtle. It explains the intelligence failures during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and it changed the way we imagined the world.

  Today’s stories of Weapons of Mass Destruction don’t end with a Big Flash but with remorse, regret, and a sense that something, somewhere, is terribly wrong.

  On February 5, 2003 then–Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the UN Security Council in an effort to sway the council and win support for what was already an inevitable invasion of Iraq. France, Russia, and China were among the hold outs and the US knew going in that there was little real chance that minds would be changed. Still, Powell made as persuasive a case for invasion as he could given the utter lack of substantial evidence of either weapons of mass destruction or any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Years later, during an interview with Barbara Walters for ABC News, Powell admitted to feeling regret.

  What follows is a mangled or cut-up version of the transcript of both Powell’s interview with Walters and the presentation to the Security Council. The techniques and abuse these two transcripts have suffered were first developed by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin in 1958 while living in a Parisian flophouse. This piece was submitted anonymously.

  “text of colin powell’s speech to the un security council cut up with regret”

  ANONYMOUS

  i would like to begin by expressing my thanks for the special effort. Thank you, Mr. You. Mr. President. Mr. President, distinguished colleagues. Today is for us all as we review the situation with respect to how you made me be here today. Here today. This is important.

  Last November 8, this council passed resolution 1441 on Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. Mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of a mass destruction, stretching back over sixteen previous unanimous votes. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm. To disarm.

  In its disarmament, we called on Iraq to cooperate with returning inspectors this council has repeatedly convicted over the years. Years. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq Resolution 1441.

  We were not dealing with an innocent party, but a regime facing serious consequences. No council member present and voting on that day did not comply. Comply. This is to assist one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to have one last illusion. But we have no illusions about the chances for compliance because we laid down tough standards for Iraq to meet to allow the inspectors to do their job. We laid down compliance and illusion. This council placed the burden on Iraq to comply and disarm and not on the inspectors to find the detectives. Inspectors are inspectors; they are not detectives. Detectives. To conceal for so long.

  The core assessments made by Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei, Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. As doctor I asked for this session today for two purposes: First, to support the two purposes:

  “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it.”

  And as Dr. ElBaradei reported, Iraq’s declaration of December 7: “Did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that we have. Have.”

  My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as well as what it doesn’t know. Iraq’s involvement in involvement as terrorism, which is also the subject of resolution 1441 and other earlier resolutions.

  The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Sources. Sources. Some are sources and some are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to pretend. The material I will present to you comes from a variety of pretend sources. Sources and student papers.

  Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives? Where did they go? What’s being hidden? Why?

  Numerous human sources tell us that there were fifteen munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. Outlines. Bunkers in yellow and red outlines. Munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. Bunkers in yellow and red. And red outlines. And bunkers in yellow and red. You see fifteen munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. Outlines. And red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active yellow and red outlines.

  How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of two arrows. These are outlines that are sure signs that the bunkers are special guards and special guards and special guards and special guards and special guards and special guards and special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the special guards. The truck you also see is a signature item.

  Now look at the picture on the right. Look at it. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone. Look at it. The tents are gone, it’s been cleaned up, and it was done on the twenty-second of December, as the UN inspection team is arriving. Look at it. See? Don’t you see? You can see. Look at it. Look.

  I would call my colleagues’ attention to Barbara Walters and to this fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail my regret. But later on, in this next example, you will see my regret. My regret is a type of concealment activity. Here are three examples.

  At this ballistic missile site, on November 10, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move this information that I’m relying upon. But I’ll say that there were some people who shouldn’t be relied upon. At this biological weapons related facility, I’ll say that there were some people in the intelligence community who knew. That these people knew, that they know. These people know that they knew that I will know.

  At this ballistic missile facility, again, days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I’ve just highlighted disappear. And there still are people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn’t be relied upon, and they didn
’t speak up. That devastated me. We don’t know precisely what Iraq was moving, but that devastated me. And that that that that that that devastated me. That devastated me. That some people in the in these in the in the the. We must ask ourselves: why would I be the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world?

  One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq’s biological weapons is the regret. Let me take you inside the regret that devastated me.

  It took the inspectors four years to find out that Iraq was making biological agents. How long do you think it will take me to find my regret? It’ll be just half as long. It took the inspectors four years to find even one of these eighteen trucks without Iraq coming forward, as they are supposed to, with the information about these kinds of capabilities? Ladies and gentlemen, I’m more efficient. These are sophisticated facilities but I’m faster. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin and then find it in four years. But it’s uncertain. Uncertain. Which dry agent of this type is more lethal for human beings. Botulinum toxin or regret? Regret.

  Jeffrey Ford is one of the most literary and compelling fantasy writers today. His work has won him multiple World Fantasy Awards, the Fountain Award, a Nebula, and an Edgar. His books include The Physiognomy, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, and The Girl in the Glass. Ford’s work is always masterfully written, weird, and deeply human.

  “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General” is included in Ford’s collection Crackpot Palace and has been anthologized many times.

  “the seventh expression of the robot general”

  JEFFREY FORD

  in his later years, when he spoke, a faint whirring came from his lower jaw. His mouth opened and closed rhythmically, accurately, displaying a full set of human teeth gleaned from fallen comrades and the stitched tube of plush leather that was his tongue. The metal mustache and eyebrows were ridiculously fake, but the eyes were the most beautiful glass facsimiles, creamy white with irises like dark blue flowers. Instead of hair, his scalp was sand paper.

  He wore his uniform still, even the peaked cap with the old emblem of the Galaxy Corps embroidered in gold. He creaked when he walked, piston compressions and the click of a warped flywheel whispering within his trousers. Alternating current droned from a faulty fuse in his solar plexus, and occasionally, mostly on wet days, sparks wreathed his head like a halo of bright gnats. He smoked a pipe, and before turning each page of a newspaper, he’d bring his chrome index finger to his dry rubber slit of a mouth as if he were moistening its tip.

  His countenance, made of an astounding, pliable, non-flammable, blast-beam resistant, self-healing, rubber alloy, was supposedly sculpted in homage to the dashing looks of Rendel Sassoon, star of the acclaimed film epic, For God and Country. Not everyone saw the likeness, and Sassoon, himself, a devout pacifist, who was well along in years when the general took his first steps out of the laboratory, sued for defamation of character. But once the video started coming back from the front, visions of slaughter more powerful than any celluloid fantasy, mutilated Harvang corpses stacked to the sky, the old actor donned a flag pin on his lapel and did a series of war bond television commercials of which the most prominent feature was his nervous smile.

  It’s a sad fact that currently most young people aren’t aware of the historic incidents that led to our war with the Harvang and the necessity of the Robot General. They couldn’t tell you a thing about our early discoveries of atmosphere and biological life on our planet’s sizeable satellite, or about the initial fleet that went to lay claim to it. Our discovery of the existence of the Harvang was perhaps the most astonishing news in the history of humanity. They protested our explorations as an invasion, even though we offered technological and moral advancements. A confluence of intersecting events led to an unavoidable massacre of an entire village of the brutes, which in turn led to a massacre of our expeditionary force. They used our ships to invade us, landing here in Snow Country and in the swamps south of Central City.

  It was said about his time on the battlefield that if the general was human he’d have been labeled “merciless,” but, as it was, his robot nature mitigated this assessment instead to that he was simply “without mercy.” At the edge of a pitched battle he’d set up a folding chair and sit down to watch the action, pipe in hand and a thermos of thick, black oil nearby. He’d yell through a bullhorn, strategic orders interspersed with exhortations of “Onward, you sacks of blood!” Should his troops lose the upper hand in the melee, the general would stand, set his pipe and drink on the ground next to his chair, remove his leather jacket, hand it to his assistant, roll up his sleeves, cock his hat back, and dash onto the battlefield, running at top robot speed.

  Historians, engineers, and AI researchers of more recent years have been nonplused as to why the general’s creators gave him such limited and primitive battle enhancements. There were rays and particle beams at that point in history and they could have outfitted him like a tank, but their art required subtlety. Barbed, spinning drill bits whirled out from the center of his knuckles on each hand. At the first hint of danger, razor blades protruded from the toes of his boots. He also belched poison, feathered darts from his open mouth, but his most spectacular device was a rocket built into his hindquarters that when activated shot a blast of fire that made him airborne for ten seconds.

  It was supposedly a sight the Harvang dreaded, to see him land behind their lines, knuckle spikes whirling, belching death, trousers smoldering. They had a name for him in Harvang, Kokulafugok, which roughly translated as “Fire in the Hole.” He’d leave a trail of carnage through their ranks, only stopping briefly to remove the hair tangling his drill bits.

  His movements were graceful and precise. He could calculate ahead of his opponent, dodge blast beams, bend backwards, touch his head upon the ground to avoid a spray of shrapnel and then spring back up into a razor-toed kick, lopping off a Harvang’s sex and drilling him through the throat. Never tiring, always perfectly balanced and accurate, his intuition was dictated by a random number generator.

  He killed like a force of nature, an extension of the universe. Hacked by axe blades or shot with arrows to his head, when his business was done, he’d retire to his tent and send for one of the Harvang females. The screams of his prisoner echoed through the camp and were more frightening to his troops than combat. On the following morning he would emerge, his dents completely healed, and give orders to have the carcass removed from his quarters.

  During the war, he was popular with the people back home. They admired his hand-to-hand combat, his antique nature, his unwillingness to care about the reasons for war. He was voted the celebrity most men would want to have a beer with and most women would desire for a brief sexual liaison. When informed as to the results of this poll, his only response was, “But are they ready to die for me?”

  Everywhere, in the schools, the post offices, the public libraries, there were posters of him in battle-action poses amidst a pile of dead or dying Harvang that read: Let’s Drill Out A Victory! The Corps was constantly transporting him from the front lines of Snow Country or the Moon back to Central City in order to make appearances supporting the war. His speeches invariably contained this line: The Harvang are a filthy species. At the end of his talks, his face would turn the colors of the flag and there were few who refused to salute. Occasionally, he’d blast off the podium and dive headlong into the crowd which would catch his falling body and, hand over hand, return him to the stage.

  In his final campaign, he was blown to pieces by a blast from a beam cannon the Harvang had stolen from his arsenal. An entire regiment of ours ambushed in Snow Country between the steep walls of an enormous glacier—the Battle of the Ice Chute. His strategies were impossibly complex but all inexorably lead to a frontal assault, a stirring charge straight into the mouth of Death. It was a common belief among his troops that who’d ever initially programmed him had never
been to war. Only after his defeat did the experts claim his tactics were daft, riddled with hubris spawned by faulty AI. His case became, for a time, a thread of the damning argument that artificial intelligence, merely the human impression of intelligence, was, in reality, artificial ignorance. It was then that robot production moved decidedly toward the organic.

  After the Harvang had been routed by reinforcements, and the Corps eventually began burying the remains of those who’d perished in the battle for Snow Country, the general’s head was discovered amidst the frozen carnage. When the soldier who found it lifted it up from beneath the stiffened trunk of a human body, the eyes opened, the jaw moved, and the weak, crackling command of “Kill them all!” sputtered forth.

  The Corps decided to rebuild him as a museum piece for public relations purposes, but the budget was limited. Most of his parts, discovered strewn across the battlefield, could be salvaged and a few new ones were fashioned from cheaper materials to replace what was missing. Still, those who rebuilt the general were not the craftsmen his creators were—techniques had been lost to time. There was no longer the patience in robot design for aping the human. A few sectors of his artificial brain had been damaged, but there wasn’t a technician alive who could repair his intelligence node, a ball of wiring so complex its design had been dubbed “The Knot.”

  The Corps used him for fund-raising events and rode him around in an open car at veterans’ parades. The only group that ever paid attention to him, though, was the parents of the sons and daughters who’d died under his command. As it turned out, there were thousands of them. Along a parade route they’d pelt him with old fruit and dog shit, to which he’d calmly warn, “Incoming.”