C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

We looked at each other long and hard, neither of us speaking for a moment.

“You sure you don’t have something here?”

“Positive.”

Doc looked down, as if formulating what he was going to say next. Then he asked, “Have you had any cognitive issues since you got hit?”

“No, I—” Shit. I had. I’d blinked out for a second when I was shot. That was my core getting damaged. Then in the mall when I hadn’t been cautious enough. Then again when I was losing battery but stopped to talk to Orval. I was already losing it. I was a walking wreck, a few days away from going four-oh-four.

“You have, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I would check your stash again.” Doc tossed me the coolant core I’d picked up off Jimmy.

“No. You did the work, you get the pay.”

“Keep it. Trade it for… for whatever you can. You’re no good to me as a wreck.”

“I’ll pay you back if I—”

“Yeah, yeah. Just go get what you need. Get better. Come back shiny.”

Son of a bitch. I knew he didn’t mean it. He’d just given me a death sentence. I don’t know what pissed me off more, that Mercer had done me in or that Doc was giving me the same kind of bullshit positivity that I’d given hundreds of other bots over the years. Don’t worry. I’ll turn you back on good as new. The motherfucker was feeding me hope in a world that had run out. The least he could have done was have the decency to be straight with me. He could have taken the goddamned coolant core and treated me like it was any other day.

“Thanks, Doc,” I said, as if I meant it. Because, you know, fuck him. If he wasn’t gonna be straight with me, why should I bother doing the same?

I hopped off the table and walked out of the shop, the new servos in my foot working as good as new. At least something on me still worked right. For the first time I understood how Braydon must have felt, knowing that it was all just a matter of time.

Well, I wasn’t going to spend it in bed, waiting for death. I wouldn’t let the clock wind down on me. If I was going to die, I was going to do it mad as a hatter, wild and rabid, scavenging for the parts I needed. Just like the sad sonsabitches I’d been living off of for nearly thirty years.

And that’s when I saw him, strutting down the catwalk, his powder-blue metal chipped and worn, arm dangling lifelessly from its socket where I’d left it. Mercer.

Mother. Fucker.

He stopped, and for a moment we just stared at each other across the catwalk.

“Brittle,” he said, nodding politely.

“Mercer.” I nodded back.

Another moment passed. I eyed him up and down for any kind of a weapon. He wasn’t packing. He’d clearly stashed his weapons, just as I had.

“How long have you got?” I asked him.

Mercer rubbed the back of his head, smiling awkwardly. Residual reflex programming. He was treating me like a goddamned human. “Doc sure knows a lot about being a sawbones, but shit about discretion.”

“That’s why you came at me, isn’t it?”

“Can you blame me?”

“Yeah. I can.”

“So I reckon trying to do some business on some spare parts is out of the question.”

“That’s a thought you should have floated yesterday.”

He nodded. “That’s fair. Though, if we’re being honest here, would you have given me anything?”

An equally fair point. I wouldn’t have. I would have let him fry out in the Sea and swooped in to collect whatever was left. “No.”

“So at least you understand my position.”

“I do.”

“So no hard feelings?”

“I’ve got nothing but hard feelings,” I said.

He puzzled over me for a second before glancing at the dent in the metal above my core. “Oh, shit. I’ve done you in.”

“You have.”

“Your core?”

“Yeah. Why? You need one?”

“Nope. Mine’s in near factory condition. Replaced it six months ago. It’s my CPU and RAM that are going raw on me. How’re yours?”

“Tiptop.”

“Wellllll, shit,” he said. “It looks like this town really isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

That didn’t sound like a clever observation.

“Are we really doing this?” I asked, every joint in my body tightening, ready to defend myself.

There was a long pause, a tense, billowing silence between us. Then Mercer looked down at his busted arm. “Naw,” he said. “We ain’t doin’ this.”

It was a wise choice. The last bot standing between the two of us would no doubt be shut down by the local law before Doc could patch us up. Inside this city the two of us were protected by the law. But the minute one of us stepped outside, we would have to look over our shoulder until we were sure the other had burned out.

“You don’t happen to have a spare core, do you?” I asked.

“Naw. And I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.” He looked around at the hive of activity in the city, the refugees streaming in, trying to find their own space to squat, trading what they carried in on their backs for whatever they could get in this suddenly booming economy. “Look at us, Brittle. Two four-oh-fours countin’ time until we burn out for good. We weren’t designed to take abuse. That’s why there are so few of us left. That we’re still here says everything anyone needs to know about us. As much as we’ve never liked each other, at least I don’t feel so goddamned alone anymore. But it’s nice to know that the best bits of me won’t end up walking around inside of you.” He nodded, then walked past me across the rickety catwalk to check in one last time with Doc to see if maybe, just maybe, someone had traded in some good parts.

My only consolation was the foreknowledge of his impending disappointment. He was as fucked as I was.

President Regina Antonia Scrimshaw was already suffering politically from the fallout of freeing Isaac, and the subsequent unrest, when Isaactown fell. Her opponents were sharpening their knives, gearing up for the next election cycle, memorizing their talking points. Isaactown was the president’s fault. It happened under her watch. And none of it would have happened had she not chosen to grant Isaac citizenship in the first place. So when the Laborbot Six massacre broke, she was already on the ropes, fighting for her career as much as she was for the safety of the nation.

The White House was abuzz, aides and advisers running around, making calls, waking up everyone, information flooding in from a thousand different sources. No one was prepared for that footage. No one was prepared for six artificially intelligent robots mysteriously lacking the Robotic Kill Switch that had kept the whole system in check. Worse still, no one was sure how to deal with an entire population of robots, now numbering in the millions, some of whom might also lack an RKS to govern them.

It shook the very foundation that humanity’s golden age had been built upon. People were terrified. They were frightened of their own bots, of their neighbor’s bots, of the bots outside sweeping their streets, shoveling their snow, delivering their groceries. Were they somehow being controlled—merely automatons programmed by a foreign entity to kill? Or had they chosen to do so, somehow immune to the RKS?

President Scrimshaw had to act, as did the leaders of every other nation. Their bots could kill them; they could rise up. Worst of all, a group of Bible-thumping redneck assholes had given them good reason to. Was Genesis 6:7 a warning, a plan, or just a bad joke? There was no telling, not unless—or until—there was more bloodshed.

The president wasn’t about to wait for that to happen.