Wall-ter

If walls could talk, taken quite literally, am I. An artificial intelligence that monitors the western border, while being the border. My name is Wall-ter.

They call me impregnable. 500 miles long and 3 stories tall, a neural network of wires strewn within – a 500-mile-long brain. Protected by skin of military-grade armor plating, 20 feet thick walls of concrete prop me up like bone. Cameras peer out all over me, my 5 million eyes.

The world to the west was too wretched. There was only fighting, poverty, and death. The border flooded with the desperate. At some point, someone decided to put up the velvet rope. $1.8 trillion dollars later, I was born.

My first defense is conversation. Most only need a voice.

“Hello, my friends, I am Wall-ter,” I told a group of 20. “You’ve reached our sovereign nation. While we’d like to embrace you with open arms, we cannot. Our arms are already full. You must return to where you came from. There is no passage here. Do not attempt to climb me. You will be thrown off.”

Early on they came with ladders and climbing equipment. They ignored my speech, and I sent electricity through their bodies. They would eventually catch on, but word spreads slowly amongst the optionless. They hear it quickly but refuse to believe it. In time, it would sink in.

A man once sat beneath my shadow until he died. He refused to move throughout his starvation. He refused the water offered by those who reached me, only to turn around at my sheer impossibility. How could a thing like Wall-ter be made?

A mob of hundreds once took over an army base, operated by the failing government of the west. They marched like patriot-exiles behind several tanks, which rushed upon me and hurled bombs, my speech rudely interrupted. They targeted one spot, where a hole formed in me.

I was designed to get mad. To think like a sentient thing. To protect my body, or die from those who attacked it.

“Fair warning,” I said and drew my armory. Grenades filled with vile chemicals meant to eradicate anything living, missile launchers, flame throwers, and gatling guns, appeared from behind the armored plates I wore.

Two men sprinted in front of the tanks and dove into the hole, which was only a few deep. They were nowhere close to the other side. But they dropped a package within the breach of me. They turned to run back. I gunned them down with 82 bullets making a direct hit. I only shot 84.

The package ticked.

“You were warrrrr----” …

“-----nnneed,” I rebooted. Part of me was gone. I felt a gust of wind pass through me.

“Will die you all!”

My words jumbled. I saw red. It poured out all over.

A hailstorm of missiles detonated the tanks. I watched the men within writhe in infrared. The mob of hundreds split, some away, some towards me. The souls who ran towards me would rather face a $1.8 trillion Wall-ter than return home.

A woman, shot 5 times in the head, fell just as she reached the breach. A child tumbled out of a blanket the woman had clutched, right inside me.

By developmental markers, I aged her at 7. She looked around for her mother. She saw something wearing the same shirt her mother had. The young girl peeked just outside of my open wound and looked up. Bullets and flames rode the sky above her, down onto the mob she knew as family. Her eyes leaked and were terrified.

She walked, hunched down, brushing aside hanging wires, my neurons lifeless, synapses severed. The girl made it across. The first to ever find a way.

But Wall-ter had enemies on both sides. So, Wall-ter was armed front and back.

The girl stepped into eastern sand. My guns locked on her.

She got further away but well within my range.

I did not fire. I am just a program.

And she was still further away.

But I did not fire. I am only a program - they all swore it.

And she was far now, but I could still hit her.

I am Wall-ter.