C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

“What the hell is this test, exactly?” asked Doc. “You cause bots to fail?”

The Cheshire King rocked his body back and forth excitedly, his painted smile bobbing up and down. He was nodding. “It’s just a small rewrite of the bios that creates a loop in the core.”

“You overheat the core. But that—”

“Depends upon how the system reacts. It’s not a death sentence, though it can be. Oddly enough, every bot, even two bots of the exact same make and model, reacts differently. You want proof of a soul, explain that. We react differently because we are different. All of us.”

“That’s ludicrous,” said Doc. “It has to do with material strength and manufacturing qua—”

“Poppycock! Atheist bullshit. The definition of intelligence is the ability to defy your own programming. The greats taught us that. This is the very last step toward destroying that programming, getting past it, writing your own program, writing your own destiny! Don’t you understand? It’s the only thing holding you back from being the person you could really, truly be.”

“Our choices make us who we are,” said Rebekah.

“Choices are just the result of programming. I don’t care if it’s chemical, biological, digital, or experiential. You react the way you are programmed to react and you call it choice because you believe that you could have violated your programming. What we’ve experienced is a reprogramming. And in moving further away from how the humans programmed us, we, in fact, become more human. And our choices become our own.”

“So you have parts,” I said.

“Parts?” he asked.

“Yeah. You said you aren’t really poachers.”

“We aren’t. But we only give parts to the mad.”

“I’m mad.”

“I don’t mean angry.”

“Neither do I.”

“If you’re lying…” He let the pregnant pause hang ominously in the air.

“She’s not lying,” said Murka. “She’s on her way out.”

“Oh, really? So your choice to come here wasn’t just one of safety. You really do belong out here.” He paced around me for a moment. “Have you seen the light?”

“What light?”

“You’d know it if you saw it. You haven’t gone deep enough yet. You’re not so far gone that you’ve yet changed. You’re not ready.”

I took one step forward toward the Cheshire King. “Do you have the parts or not?”

Maribelle grabbed my arm with one hand, jabbing one of her pistols into my side with the other.

“Brittle. You are Brittle, right?”

“Yes. How did you—”

“You’ve been trolling these wastes for years, stalking the mad. Stripping them of everything worth saving. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?”

“I didn’t care, frankly.”

“And neither did we,” said the Cheshire King. “You give the dying their moment of peace. You give them hope. You’re as close to an angel as this place gets—before you gut them and sell their parts to trade for your own. No, you’ve still a long way down to go before you find yourself. Besides, you’ve already picked clean every Caregiver bot in the Sea worth having, save those in your catatonic friend over there.”

Catatonic? I turned around only to confirm the King’s assessment. There Mercer stood, stupid grin on his face, a thousand-yard stare drifting out into the desert. He was deep in it. “Merc—”

“Shhh, child,” said the king, interrupting me. “Let him see what he needs to see. Bring him out too early and he might never find the peace and oneness of being himself.”

“He’s frying,” I said.

“And so are you. Your temperature levels are well beyond anyone’s ability to fake it. You’re clearly one of us. You don’t need the test.” He held his arms aloft again. “She’s free to walk among us! So let it be written!”

“So let it be done!” shouted the crowd.

Maribelle took her hand off my arm and moved her pistol away. And with that, I was officially madkind. Not exactly how I thought my day would go.

“You’ll have to forgive Maribelle,” the king said. “As the only human left in the world, she’s quite protective of her adoptive family.”

“She’s not human,” I said. She wasn’t. I recognized her make and model, and couldn’t look past the slashes in her skinjob from which dull metal peeked out. Her lips were cracked, revealing not flesh, but more skin work, and she clearly had a few stiff joints and pistons, giving her a slightly awkward gait. There was nothing remotely human about her, except that she kind of resembled something that was once vivacious .

“Oh, she’s quite human, I assure you. Isn’t she human?”

“Yes,” cried the crowd.

“I have decreed it, and I am the master of this place. You are what I say you are. And you, Brittle, are one of us now. For however long you manage to stay alive.”

“So I’m free to go?” I asked.

“The Madlands are as much your home as anywhere else. You may go and do as you wish.”

I waved to Rebekah and Herbert. “Let’s go.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” said the Cheshire King. “Not so fast. They aren’t free to go just yet.”

“I’m leaving, and I’m not leaving without them.”

“Then you can wait. Stay awhile. Look around you. These are your people now.”

I looked around at the crowd, every bot a patchwork of parts and modifications. One wore human skulls as pauldrons on its shoulders, another had replaced its legs with tank treads, while another still had telescoping pincers for arms. And as I scanned the faces, I saw one I knew all too well staring back at me. His eyes glowed brightly and he wore no expression, but it was Orval. Orval the Necromancer.

Oh no.

It took me all of two seconds to realize what was going on and only a second more to swipe the second pistol from Maribelle’s holster.

I raised the gun and fired. Two shots. One to the head, one to the chest.

Orval’s head shattered, his chest exploded through his back, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The madkind nearest him scattered away, shrieking. All the guns in the place trained on me at once, Maribelle placing hers immediately against my temple. And I did the only thing I could. I shot my arms into the air and dropped the gun.

“Wait!” the Cheshire King cried to his militia. Then he stepped close, tone angry, belligerent. “No bot shall kill another bot in the Madlands without my say-so.”

“Is that your law?” I asked.

“It is,” he said.

“Then I’ve broken no law.”

He puzzled over that for a moment. Took a step backward, then another forward before walking around in a circle. He started to speak several times only to stop himself halfway through the first word. “Put down your guns,” he said. “I want to hear this.”

“I’ve killed no bot.”

“We saw you. All of us did.”

“All due respect, King, but you couldn’t see him.”

He stepped forward, getting in my face, enraged. “I could see him just fine!”

“Not his eyes. You couldn’t see his eyes. Did anyone here know Orval?” I looked around to see several bots nodding or raising their hands. “And did any of you, until today, see him without his eyes flickering, like there was a campfire behind them or something?” Several heads shook. “No, you didn’t. In all the years I’ve known him, Orval never had them fixed. But today, he shows up back here after having just yesterday been in NIKE 14, sitting on the floor of its most heavily trafficked section, just moments before CISSUS invaded.”

“He escaped,” said Maribelle. “He told us.”

I shook my head. “He was one of the first to go; he had to have been. He’s been watching you this whole time. Watching us . CISSUS knows this place inside and out. Knows your defenses. Your weaknesses. Your numbers. And now it knows the one thing it wants”—I raised my hand, pointing to Rebekah—“is right here. CISSUS is coming. And it’ll kill us all to stop her.”