Chapter Four - Part 3

"Kid... I told you about the A.I. when I first began disclosing all this to you. You are arguing now, out of fear. Don't get me wrong there is plenty to be afraid of... look at those stats I sent to your com the other day, the stats for potential survival."

I brought them up, "Look at the ones I said were projected percentages for remaining with GM."

"Yeah..." I was getting more frustrated. "So?"

"None of those stats show what will happen when all this winds down and they no longer are in need of... bulk, mass killing."

"So... what happens?"

"Our little corner of usefulness ends with the body count reaching its projected goals. I mean, a few will be kept for hunt and kill operations, but in about two years ours numbers will be met and most of us, including GM personnel are as good as dead."

"How do you know this?"

"I have my intel sources and these are all mutually confirming, though each, mutually isolated from the others."

He looked a little more than anxious, occasionally glancing at his com and the camera in back of me. "The thing about those numbers on your com for GM, they don't indicate your chances once the killing here starts. I couldn't calculate for that unknown, and I did not want it to appear that I was pushing you to run from here just because I think the chances for those who stay here are the worst of all."

The cameras came on and his smile showed relief, and he started doing that mouth thing.

"And so, the way I see it, the scales tip radically in favor of the escapee if he or she can make it beyond those metrics."

He touched a button on his com and said, "But, you or I can't go out like the rest have, we would go out with the proper intel. Those numbers you have for the survival of an escapee, would be for the first to leave, with the one who leaves second having the odds cut in half. All my former brothers and sister were one hundred percent dead, before they left."

"Give me an example of one of your sources."

"Mapping... the games now are having you mostly deployed to rural or semi-wilderness arena of operations with the occassional excursion like your first hop into ultra-modern alien structures. When the rural areas are culled enough, and the small town populations depleted, the maps will more and more show dense populace, mostly alien city games with high bug counts." I nodded to show I was following, "These missions will be kill missions in our metro areas across our planet though the structures will show as alien and the people as bugs. These game maps will be rolling out in the middle of this year, I have already seen them."