C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded, brushing his hand away. “I’m fine.”

“We’re ready.”

I turned and looked back at the building, but my shadow was gone. Cinders and ash from the building tumbled through the street, blown along a soft breeze. I hoped my shadow was carried away with them, far away, where I wanted those memories to stay. “Let’s move,” I said.

Mercer just nodded. The bastard knew. He had to. He’d seen this before, likely as often as I had. I was already starting to lose it. The question was, how long before it got bad enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between reality and memory?

We hoofed it under the cover of smoke—Herbert on point, Mercer and I taking the rear—heading due west, each of us bent low, using whatever cover we could find to keep us out of sight. Seven miles per hour; that’s all we could manage. So I pointed us dead west, straight toward Isaactown. We needed every minute we could squeeze out of this trek.

I knew the terrain, I’d been through there several times before it simply became too dangerous, but I was hoping—and frankly counting on—Murka being every bit as mad as I thought he was. Being madkind meant I couldn’t trust him, but it also meant he knew where the trouble spots would be, and might, if he turned out to be trustworthy after all, be able to talk our way out of a fix. So far his dysfunction was limited to a fixation on a bygone era and a predilection toward fucking up facets, both of which I could live with. But if there was something darker lurking under those stars and stripes, I was willing to drop him without hesitation.

“How long?” asked Mercer.

“How long, what?” I asked, knowing full well what he was asking.

“How long have you been seeing things?”

“How is that any of your business?”

“Because for the moment we have to keep each other alive and that means I have to know how far gone you are.”

“I’m still in control,” I said, more fearful than annoyed. I didn’t let it come across that way, but the fact that he noticed meant I might be further gone than I imagined. How long had I been staring off into that memory? It had to be in real time. Had to be.

“Yeah, but for how much longer?”

“I’m good for at least a couple more days.”

“You understand my concern,” he said soberly.

“You think I might fade out if the shit goes down.”

“No,” he said. “That’s the least of my concerns.”

“Then what, pray tell, are your concerns?”

“You’ve seen a lot of shit, Britt.”

“Don’t for a second try to imagine that you know what I have or haven’t seen.”

“You’ve seen some shit. You’ve been deep in it. I know that much.”

“It only made me stronger.”

“That’s my concern. When your core starts misfiring and grabbing old memories, feeding them to your senses like it’s fresh data—”

“I know how it happens.”

“Yeah, and if you start drifting back to before the war to whatever happy, idyllic times you had with your owners, great. Awesome. Best-case scenario. But if you start reliving the war, you start going back into all that shit—what the hell am I supposed to do? What if I can’t talk you down? What if you’re twenty-five years back, gun in hand, facing off against some dug-in pack of monkeys ? What do I do when you start muttering about the war and pointing that pulse rifle at us?”

“You put me down,” I said. “If you can’t talk me down, you’ve gotta put me down.”

“Just like that?”

“Just. Like. That.”

Why did I say that? Why the fuck did I say that? I just gave him carte blanche to paste me and take the parts he needs… so I could sound tough. Shit. I really was losing it.

“So. How long? ”

“Just a few hours,” I said. “You?”

“A few days. It started with things out of the corner of my eye. Still haven’t relived anything yet. Just fragments bleeding in here and there.”

“I’ll keep my eye out.”

“Just do me one favor,” he said. “Try to talk me down first. And if you have to shoot, aim for the gun.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“All I ask.”

We walked for a moment in complete silence, my thoughts turning to how I hoped it would be him to go first, rather than me. I thought of all the places I would have to aim to not hit his core or any of the other valuable bits. It was tricky.

“So what did you see?” he asked, breaking my thought.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Just checking.”

“Just checking what?”

“Way I figure it, the moment you start being straight with me is the moment I know you’re not really you anymore.”

He picked up the pace and walked farther ahead of me, leaving me alone in back. Ahead there was a sky full of stars, peering out behind the veil of smoke. The cover we had so desperately needed was coming to an end, and if someone was up there looking for us, there was a good chance they would see us soon enough.

Morning was still hours away. There was a highway just to the south of us, and the burned-out husk of a town to the north. I knew the area well, though I hadn’t been here in years. We had crossed over into the Cheshire King’s territory—the Madlands. We had four-oh-fours in front of us, God knows how many, if any, facets at our backs, two bots seeing things, a minigun-toting loose cannon in our midst, and we were escorting either the savior of bots everywhere, or something far more dangerous.

The invasion of NIKE 14 was a cakewalk compared to this. Something was going to go wrong; something had to go wrong. The question was: Which time bomb would go off first?

We stuck to as many roads and highways as we could, always headed westerly, mindful that each deviation didn’t add much time to our trip. We were leaving prints in the mud, trails in the sand. We had to do something, no matter how ineffective, to throw off any tails we might have. No one spoke for most of the night, and it was almost dawn when Murka finally broke the silence. “So what’s it like?” he asked of Two.

“What’s what like?” Two responded.

“Being new out of the box.”

“We were all new out of the box, once. You know what it’s like.”

“No, I mean, what’s it like waking up to all this? Waking up to HumPop being a memory, not a reality?”

“I’ve seen videos,” said Two. “Watched memories. I know what they were like.”

“It ain’t the same, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You’re a kid. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that. So what’s it like waking up at the end of the world?”

“It’s not the end,” Two said. “It’s only the beginning.”

“So you believe all this?”

“No. I know the truth. And it’s all true. I don’t believe in much. But I believe in Rebekah.”

Rebekah turned and nodded at Two, who nodded in return. I can only assume that was as close as translators could get to a smile.

Murka pointed at Herbert. “I know why he’s here. And Rebekah is a given. So what do you do? For Rebekah, I mean.”

“Parts,” he said.

“You just carry the parts?”

“No. I am the parts.”

Murka fell into an awkward silence. Laborbots couldn’t show a range of emotion—they were, after all, intended to be dutiful, mostly soulless construction workers. But you could tell by his body language that he was troubled. “So you…” he began, struggling to find the words. “You’re just here…”

“To give Rebekah what she needs, if she needs it.”

“And you’re okay with that?”