The big day everybody at Cydex' Haifa Development Complex
had been waiting for has finally arrived.
Well, not EVERYBODY. In fact, less then 10 people in the
entire facility were officially informed that the time has
come for the project they had been working on for so long to
be put to the trial of fire.

When Cydex acquired the Haifa Complex from Intel, it was a
small but highly successful research facility for developing
microprocessors. It was obvious why an international
corporation that dealt mainly with military robotics would
want such a facility - it never hurts to have more experts
in critical junctions of your field of business working for
you and not for the  competition. However, there was another
reason for the acquisition. In the year 2060, the land
between the Jordan river and the Mediteranean sea was still
engulfed in low-intensity conflict, providing perfect
conditions for the testing of military systems in a
controlled, yet realistic environment.
The Israeli Army was only too happy to cooperate in exchange
for technology disclosure agreements and discounts off the
final products. Nosy interference was attenuated by Cydex'
extensive media holdings - as a result of a major deal made
back in 2052, CNN now meant "Cydex News Network".

Project CHA-1 was one such system. Its initials Standing for
"Combat, Humanoid, Artificially intelligent", the project
was meant to produce the world's first robotic soldier that
would out-perform its human counterparts. Powered by a
German-made MTU mini-reactor, the unit's real power lay
within its cluster of neural proccessors that imitated and
enhanced the action of the human brain. Developed in the
Haifa Complex, the neural cluster made all the difference.
The unit could shoot guns. It could operate devices. It
could drive vehicles. Most importantly, it could THINK and
devise tactics appropriate to the situation it was facing.
Among those in on the project, the system became known as
the Battle Angle.

Indeed, the Angel was a magnificent piece of war machinery.
Its most significant draw-back was its tendency to
occasionnally lock-up, something that its designers were yet
unable to remedy. The entire thing would just freeze,
requiring a hard reboot in order to return to operationl
status, just as if it were one of those ancient personal
computers running some flashy, bug-riddled consumer-grade
operating system. Unable to overcome the problem, Cydex'
engineers drew on a classic Israeli proverb in their
attitude to the whole issue: "Leave it, it'll be alright!".
However, Being vaguely aware of the fact that this attitude,
when applied to critical issues, had sometimes led to
considerable catastrophies in Israeli history, they did
install a simple fail-safe mechanism. An ordinary secondary
processor would track the main neural cluster. If a lock-up
were to occure while in combat mode, the Angel's
mini-reactor would be made to go critical, causing
everything inside the advanced alloys shell to completely
melt down. Thus, a multi-million Sheqel war machine would
metamorphose within a heartbeat into a most disturbing,
grotesque piece of so-called post-modern art.
It was quite a satisfactory solution which abolished the
danger of an intact unit falling into unwanted hands as a
result of a lock-up. The glitch happend rarely enough that
the entire issue was reduced to a remote,
statistically-acceptable prospect. Like the old automatic
guns that worked perfectly most of the time, but every now
and then jammed. Of course, the jam would sometimes take
place at an akward moment, like when storming the
opposition. All in accordance to Murphy's Laws, which
dictated that if anything COULD go wrong, it WILL, in the
worst possible moment and in a manner that would cause the
greatest possible damage.

For that reason exactly, no less than FOUR Angels were
dispersed among the huge crowds that filled the Manara
square in Ramalla, temporary capital of the Temporary State
of Palestine. They both have been "temporary" for over fifty
years now. On the main stage, a dark-clad, charismatic man
was making a ferocious speech. Abdullah Aziz el-Aiuby,
better known as "Abu Yassin", was first made famous in the
TSP when he volunteered his first-born son for a botched
attempt to imprint the memory and personality structure of
Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the late spiritual leader of the Hamas
movement, on a living body. The technology at the time was
redicilously inadequate for such an undertaking and the boy
became ill with several mental disorders before dying of
brain infection.
15 years later, Abu Yassin was leading the Business Wing of
a Hamas splinter group that out-lasted and out-performed the
original. El-saiqa ("The Storm") was more of a mini-state
then an organization. Its Political Wing had representatives
in all middle-eastren forums. Its Security Wing was a highly
trained, well-armed force sufficient to deter the
Palestinian Army from entering several neighborehoods in its
own capital. And under Abu Yassin, its Business Wing grew
into an international corporation - and that was just the
legitimate and semi-legitimate portion of it. Various highly
illegal goods, such as narco- and electro-drugs, were being
trafficed on a regular basis by some of the Business Wing's
more shadowy "affilates". Despite of all that, Abu-Yasin was
angry. Not with the people whom he vehemently threatened,
denounced and outright cursed in his fluent address. No,
those words were uttered in order to please the crowds. And
Pleased they were, cheering him with unison, with the phrase
that has towered over so many other mass-rallies in the very
same square. "Itbach El-Yahud, Itbach El-Yahud". "Kill The
Jews".
And the more the crowd was pleased, the more powerful
Abu-Yassin became, vis-a-vis the real subject of his anger -
his so-called "friends" in the leadership of the Political
Wing. He usually thought of them as monkies. Great in
physical gestures, in shouting and making noise. And they
just didn't realize, or rather wouldn't realize, that the
only reason they could be as smug as they were, was that the
Business Wing supplied them with endless amounts of funds.
Palestinian Pounds, Israeli Sheqels, US Dollars, European
Euros - nevermind the currency, it was a river of money that
fueled EVERYTHING. The security forces, the bribes, the
influence, the luxurious latest-model hover-cars in a place
where most people traveled by ancient automobils. None of
them had the skill to achieve that amount of cash flow. He
knew it, they knew it. However, they believed that they were
better at shouting and inflaming the masses and that this
fact made them kings of the hill.
Now he was proving them wrong. With every passing moment,
with every inciteful phrase, with every ferocious chant from
the crowd, his power grew. After today, he thought, nothing
would be the same.
He was right, but not quite in the way he thouhgt. Smug as
they were, the Political Wing was not, could not, be
composed of foolish, careless persons. Railgun projectiles
from Israeli gunships relieved it from the presence of such
individuals. Abu-Yassin's overtly-ambitious character did
not go unnoticed. It was only too easy to leak his retinal
pattern. Ramalla was swirming with Israeli General Security
Service informants.

Angel-1's hands were raised in the air. His Kafia head-dress
completely hid his face, except for a sliver of blazing
black eyes that seemed completely human, surrounded by dark
lab-grown skin. His voice synthisizer accurately produced
the very same chants everyone around him were using their
vocal cords to produce. His eyes were fixed on a single
spot. Abu-Yassin's right eye.

Several Kilometers away, in a  non-descript Ramalla suburb,
inside a non-descript appartment, a non-descript man sat and
stared at a wall. Or so it seemed. The wall made a perfect
background for Eliran's cybernetic eye's retinal display. A
sattelite video-link fed Angel-1's visual stream directly to
Eliran's display. The face shown matched another facial
image conjured up from Eliran's 2 terrabyte data storage
unit, implanted into a small bulge at the back of his neck
and connected to his cybereye through wireless. With
nearly-invisible twitches of his fingers, Eliran operated
the image processing software installed in his sub-dermal
computer. The processor, placed in another bulge next to the
data-storage unit, was quick to announce, through a message
flashed over the two images, that the man Angel-1 was
looking at was indeed the man whose photo had been taken a
month earlier at the hospital, next to Abu-Yasin's wife as
she was giving birth to Abu-Yasin's youngest daughter. Which
meant absolutly nothing. So Eliran smoothly went on to the
next phase, as dictated by a very clear,
break-it-and-lose-your-job, procedure.
"Angel-1, Permission granted for active retinal scan." His
lips barely moved and no voice was heard as he muttered
words no other human could hear.

The sat-link did carry his words to four decidedly
non-human, yet thinking, beings. Angel-1's mouth was wide
open as he was still chanting. An invisible low-power laser
beam broke out of it, instantly making contact with Abu
Yassin's retina.
"Identification positive."

The image was truely ridicilous. A non-descript man, sitting
in an empty room, looking at a wall, a strange smirk on his
face, his lips moving without making a sound, as if he were
praying.
"Execute."

By any conceivable standard, Ali Agbaria was a tough man. As
a member of El-Saiqa's VIP Security Unit, he had to be. He
was made even tougher by multiple cybernetic enhancements
that improved his already impressive strenght and speed. And
of course, there was his sub-dermal armour, that gave the
word "tough" a whole new definition. Dressed in his black
suite, cyber-eyes covered with black sun-glasses, hair
heavily gelled, moustache neatly trimmed, Ali looked just
like he thought a real Palestinian man should look. The gun
felt nice and cold in his hand as he calmly scanned the
crowd, his weapon's cross-hairs whizzing all over his
retinal display. Ali was proud of his cyber-eyes. He was the
only one in the unit who had them. All the others had to do
with clumsy computerized sunglasses. He made it a point to
have the best, nicest-looking NON-computerized sunglasses
money could buy.  A combination of cash and ideology made
Ali extremely dedicated. Piles of cash. Piles of ideology.
He  was standing right next to Abu-Yassin, a little behind
him.
As he was looking at the crowd, Ali suddenly spotted an
anomaly. He was not sure, but it seemed as if someone was
forcing his way towards the stage. Ali was about to magnify
the image in order to get a better fix on the anomaly, when
the anomaly came to get a better fix on Ali.

Angel-3's leap covered almost 30 yards, violently pushing
back the people that were around him. The first combat kill
made by an Angel was a bystander whose jaw was smashed into
his head by Angel-3's elbow as he rocketed off the ground.
The sheer force of his synthetic muscles brought him just
where he had computed, at an incredible velocity.

Being hit by a mass of over 200 KG traveling at a high speed
had a most adverse effect on Ali's sunglasses. Not to
mention on Ali himself. Angel-3 was kneeling, cracked
concrete and gory pieces of Ali all around him. The other
guards were just starting to respond when Angel-3 already
grabbed Abu-Yassin.

As Angel-3 leapt into action, Angel-4 simply stretched his
left arm forward, over the shoulder of a bearded man
standing in front of him, his palm raised as if he were
signaling 'Stop!' to the people on the stage.
The bearded man heard: CLICK-CLICK. He ducked.
Rounds of 5.56mm ammo tore through the skin at the base of
Angel-4's palm as he poured them into everyone standing on
the stage. Single shot, three per second. All hit their
marks in the head, aimed by an improved version of Cydex'
SureFire targeting computer incorporated into the Battle
Angels. Soon enough, no-one was left standing on the stage
except for Angel-3, who was holding Abu-Yassin to the
ground, face down, pressing his knee into the man's back,
with Angel-4 now providing covering fire in full automatic.
While an inner magazine supplied the ammo for the first few
shots, Angel-4 now had to stick clips into a port-hole in
his arm in order to keep firing. It may have looked funny,
but no one was laughing. Angel-3 was also firing now and
their combined fire-power brought down most possible
immediate threats before the threat could open fire. Any
bullets that were fired at them futily bounced off the
alloyed shell that made their real skin, beneath the
lab-grown camouflage.
Within a few minutes a low rumble could be heard. A pair of
helicopters appeared in the sky above. As they were closing
in, one of them, a gunship, trained its railgun on a group
of vehicles parked next to the stage and opened fire. In an
instant, the hover-cars were transformed into a blazing mass
of burning metal. The other helicopter came down low and a
pair of cables dropped down from it. Angel-3 hoisted
Abu-Yassin accross his shoulder and ran to one of the
cables, grabbing it with his free hand.
As Angel-4 grabbed the other cable, the helicopter gained
altitude and speed, with the gunship following in its wake,
leaving behind a human mass of rage.
The entire affair lasted less then five minutes.

Coda

"Well Yonatan, how did it go?"

Yonatan Weiss, Manager of Cydex' Haifa Development Complex,
leaned back in his chair. the chubby face of Victor O'Riley,
one of Cydex' top executives, floated vividly in front of
him in 3D and in bluish colors. Much more vividly then he
would have liked. He smiled.

"Excellent Victor, absolutlely splendid. All mission
parameters were met. Performance has exceeded our
expectations by 15 percent. I believe we have a winning
product here. General Ziv has already stated that she would
support our product in the next budgetary panel and I
strongly believe that armies and security forces the world
over will be more than anxious to add the CHA-1 to their
arsenal."

Victor's bluish face showed obvious relief. "Wonderful! I
will be expecting your full report of the test-run as soon
as you can send it to me."

Yonatan's smile broadened. "It'll be alright, Victor, it'll
be alright. I'll send it to you first thing tomorrow
morning. Now, if you'll excuse me, I wish to conduct some
more in-depth probing and analysis."

"Of course, of course. good day."

O'Riley's face faded off and Yonatan reached for his control
panel. a moment later, The face of Sigal, his chief
scientist, appeared in the same bluish 3D, a much more
pleasant sight than the bloated mass it replaced, no doubt.
-"Champagne, in my office"?
-"I'll be there in five", she replied, with just the touch
of a smile.
Indeed, some very deep probing and analysis were
forthcoming.

He'll have plenty of time to complete the report later,
during the night. He'll have to find a way to explain why
Angel-2 didn't come back from the mission and why the
Manara-square now has a new, full-sized statue of a man
standing with his fist in the air, an angry expression on
his face, looking so real that one would almost be tempted
to think that the statue was once alive.

Oh, well, at least it fits in with the view.

"It'll be alright...!"