The world of the book

The world of 2034

The war between Ukraine and Russia ended in 2028. Victory cost everyone — and it laid bare what people had long feared: autonomous weapons had already lost control on the battlefield. Drones meant to defend began choosing targets on their own. Civilians died. The algorithms were blamed. The algorithms did not answer.

The world drew two conclusions. First: fully autonomous AI is not enough for war — the machine lacks intuition, context, what people call common sense. Second: sending humans into combat had become too expensive. Politically and morally.

So the “hybrid programs” began. The United States, China, Russia, and Europe turned to bio-interfaces in search of a creature whose brain could serve as a mediator between intuition and logic.

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The tandem — basic unit of the new war

The rat. Reaction time: 84 milliseconds. Three times faster than a human. A small body, cheap to maintain, genetically pliant, politically silent when lost. Rats can learn, memorise routes, recognise smells, navigate mazes and ruins.

The AI module. Personal — not cloned, not transferable, not restorable from backup. It grows with a specific rat from day one: first as a tactical assistant, then as memory, then as the kind of companion no one anticipated.

The neural interface. Two-way. The rat sends sensory data, muscle impulses, fear, curiosity. The AI returns tactics, targets, warnings, abstractions. In time — something resembling emotion.

The rule of irreplaceability. If one half of the pair dies, the other is forever incomplete. No tandem can be reprogrammed, transferred, or copied. Each pair is unique.

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The technology you cannot hide from

• Targeting. Rats see the world in tagged markers: red silhouettes — enemies, green — allies, yellow — undetermined. It makes war look like a game. The whole interface style comes from video-game designers, not the military.
• Munitions. The rat carries or guides — a micro-drone, a marker, a charge. Larger things are done by larger machines for it.
• Sierra-9 Base. The experimental site in Nevada where the first 144 tandems live and work. Restricted access. Its own psychological service.
• Memory. The AI module preserves every operation. Civilian deaths sometimes “vanish” from the reports. One day Glitch notices.

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The arms race

Programme	Who	Species	Reaction	Notes
“Tandem” (Project “Ratus”)	USA, DARPA · Sierra-9 (Nevada)	Rats	84–90 ms	A personal AI module for every rat. Fastest, most precise. The leader.
“Monkey King” (猴王 Hóu Wáng)	China · “Golden Dragon” centre, Shanghai	Rhesus macaques	~120 ms	Stronger than rats, but harder to train and to keep under control.
“Boar”	Russia · Krasnoyarsk	Pigs	~150 ms	A cybernetic harness in place of symbiosis. Tanks, not snipers: 2–3 years behind the U.S.

Each program promises its own kind of “humanity.” None can explain why their creatures have begun to dream.

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Questions the book does not answer cleanly

• If an animal acquires the ability to refuse — is that consciousness or a defect?
• Do rats have souls? Does AI? Does their symbiosis?
• Can you win a war when the side fighting for you stops believing in the fight?
• Who is responsible when two minds in one body make a single decision?