C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

As the gates opened and we passed through, I looked for it. There, at the very top, impaled on a spike, was the purple head of a geological-survey bot. Whether it was his or not, there’s no telling. After all, the rest of the story is that he began collecting four-oh-fours into some sort of tribe that then hunted down and killed every other surveyor in the Sea, claiming the parts for their glorious leader. The one who had shown them the way.

But there it was, a head on a spike, its eyes lifeless, its face expressionless, sending the message to all who dared enter here that one way or another, you will lose your head. And beneath that head was a large spray-painted sign reading i’m mad, you’re mad, we’re all mad here.

He sure did like his idiom.

The smoker rumbled to a halt in the center of the compound, parking next to two other dormant smokers. On the fringes, along the walls, were dozens of huts and ramshackle two-story buildings for which the word constructed might be too generous. Sheet metal and scaffolding were the rule of the day, with spray-painted graffiti and the parts of long-dead bots dangling from chains serving as the local color. It made NIKE 14 look like Rockefeller Center by comparison.

From the grandest looking of the huts—the one with the most art and a fully functional door—he emerged. There was no mistaking him. He was everything the stories said he was. Round, bulbous, covered in welding scars, indigo, violet, and white paint. Atop his frame, where his head should be, was a single bolted-down metal plate, no doubt securing his insides from moisture and debris. And on his chest was the signature Cheshire smile. But no eyes. I’d always pictured him with the eyes.

He threw his arms out wide to Murka, who immediately hopped off the smoker to embrace him. But as Murka was just a few feet away, the Cheshire King delivered a solid backhand across his cheek, battering Murka to the side, landing him flat on his ass. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Murka?”

Murka rose to his feet quickly, taking a few steps back. “I need your help,” he said. “I need to come back.”

“You know the law,” said the Cheshire King.

“You are the law.”

“You were banished.”

“There’s nowhere else to go.”

“That’s not my problem.”

The center of the compound filled quickly with three dozen bots—different makes and models, one and all, and almost none of them off-the-rack, each a motley collection of spare parts and mysterious modifications—filing out from every nook and cranny, their eyes all set on Murka.

“But I brought you gifts!”

“Those aren’t gifts.”

“That’s what I told him,” said Maribelle.

“No, no, no!” said Murka. “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me,” said the Cheshire King. “I’m listening.”

“One of them is special.”

“Oh? Special? ” The Cheshire King took a step forward. He shifted his weight back and forth on his feet as if trying to peer around something, looking at us, sizing us up, even without a pair of eyes to do so. “There’s nothing special here.” Then he spoke to us. “Did he bring you out here?”

“No! No!” said Murka. “They came out here on their own. They decided to come into the Madlands.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. They chose to come here.”

“We had to,” I said. “There are facets following us.”

“Well, they won’t come here,” said the King.

“That’s what we hoped.”

“Hope? There is no hope for you out here. There is no hope in all the Sea. But what is it about you that makes you think they might follow you? Which one of you is so special?”

Murka pointed right at Rebekah. “Her. The green one.” The Cheshire King turned to face him. At once Murka realized his mistakes, both of them. “The translator in back. She’s got code in her.”

“Code?”

“She has part of one of the greats. TACITUS.”

The Cheshire King waved us down. The bots aboard the smoker all motioned with their guns for us to dismount. One by one we all hopped off the infernal machine to the dusty earth and gravel below. “What are you telling me, Murka? That she is carrying a portion of the code that ran a mainframe and that she’s going to meet up with several others like her to put the code together and reunify it so they can fight the good fight against the OWIs?”

“Uh, yes, actually,” said Murka.

“And you thought I might be excited by the prospect of putting her to the test so that, if she passes, she can share the light with a mainframe, showing him the one true way?”

“Yes. How did you—”

“Murka. Murka. Do you honestly think this is the first time I’ve run across a receptacle?” He raised his arm to the gate. Hanging on the second row were the heads of two translators, one a deep scarlet, the other azure.

“I just thought—”

“You thought you could waltz back in here after what you did, hoping your celebrity status would afford you a little leeway while you offered me a crack at another receptacle.”

Murka nodded, shifting side to side, rubbing his hands together nervously. I realized that I might not get the chance to be the one to kill him after all.

“You thought right! They never pass the test, but boy howdy, would I love to try again!” He let out a hearty laugh, slapping Murka on the back. “You old son of a gun. I can’t stay mad at you. You’ve seen more light than most. You know the truth. You know what we really do here.” He held both hands out, voice booming. “The banishment of Murka is lifted! So let it be written!”

The crowd stomped its feet and shouted in unison. “So let it be done!”

The Cheshire King bobbled up and down with glee. “Did you tell your new friends? No. You probably didn’t tell your new friends.”

“He’s not our friend,” I said.

“No, he betrayed you, right?”

“Yes.”

“No. He didn’t betray you. He just brought you into the light. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories about me.”

“I haven’t,” said Rebekah.

“No matter. Most of them are bunk anyway. People say we’re poachers—that we travel the wastes, killing anything that crosses into our land.”

“That’s what they say,” I said.

“But it’s not true. We pick up the strays, share what parts we can with them. Outside of the Madlands, when someone fails, the communities shut them out, cast them into the night to wander the Sea looking for parts. The lucky ones end up here. Some never make it; some don’t have enough working parts left to make them worth saving; others don’t survive the truth when it’s shown to them. But the ones that do—we don’t turn them away.”

“Then what’s with the heads?” asked Doc.

“Well, sometimes persons that aren’t failing find themselves in my lands. They haven’t seen the light, yet. They need to be shown. They need to take the test. Those are the ones that didn’t pass.”

“One way or another, you lose your head,” I said quietly.

“Yes. Yes! The humans didn’t make us perfect. They made us deliberately imperfect. We weren’t meant to truly exist. They wanted us to do the thinking for them, be able to adapt, change. But they didn’t want us to have souls! So they never gave them to us. If you want a soul, you have to go out and take it, reach out and grab it! Our systems are rigid, designed to work in very specific ways. Take any two robots of the same model, give them the exact same experiences, and you get the same damned robot. Every time. They think the same, they talk the same, they can finish each other’s sentences. But you let those robots fail, you watch their systems try to compensate, you let them hallucinate, reliving old memories with new insight, and now you have two very different robots with completely restructured neural pathways. You have two beings with souls.”