C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

Doc looked at me, his eyes heavy, hoping I might have some comforting words, something to say in a moment like this. None came to mind. “We’ll hold on to your memory,” he said. “As soon as we’re in Isaactown, we’ll try to find you a body.”

“You can’t carry me,” said Two. “My drives are too heavy. They’ll get damaged beyond repair.”

“We have this yacht. We can carry you.”

“We’ll be lucky if this thing makes it to Isaactown,” said Mercer. “We’re running on fumes.”

“You’re not helping,” said Doc.

“No,” said Two. “This is it. I’m going to die.” He looked at Herbert, who only exchanged somber glances with him. Then he looked back at Doc, nodding.

“I’m gonna need you to shut down, son.”

“Okay. I can do that.” He took Herbert by his one good hand and looked him in the eyes. “I love you, Herbert.”

“I love you too, Two,” said Herbert. “You were a good soldier.”

“Was I? I don’t remember ever being a good soldier.”

Herbert shook his head. “Who we are in life is one thing. Who we are in the face of death is everything else. We’ll remember you, kid. We’ll remember the little things, sure. But most of all, we’ll remember this. The time came when we needed you most and you were there.”

Two nodded. If he could cry, he might have. If he could smile at that, I’m certain he would have. Instead he looked back at Doc, then looked around at us. “It was nice meeting you all. Good-bye, everyone.”

And the light of his eyes winked out, dimming a soft violet before popping with a single flash of green.

“Quickly,” said Doc. “We have to make sure Rebekah’s memory is intact.”

I looked at him sharply. “I thought you said—”

“And give the kid the hope that he might wake up? Or the doubt that he might not be able to save her? That would have scared him even more. He died thinking he could save Rebekah. Let’s just hope he can.”

Doc popped open Two’s case and rapidly began pulling plugs. His hand bent backward, a screwdriver unsheathing from his wrist before diving into the case. His movements were precise, his skill extraordinary. It wasn’t like a surgeon’s or a mechanic’s; he was like a conductor, mastering seventy-six different individual moving parts at once.

“All right, all right,” he said. “It’s too goddamned quiet on this boat.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“Neither do I,” said Mercer.

Doc nodded. “I ever tell you two where I was when the war started?” We both shook our heads. Doc was a lot of things; being forthcoming about himself wasn’t exactly one of them. “I was on the moon when it happened. We never got the download. I started out building ships—sea vessels—mostly tankers, but a few military contracts here and there. There’s this famous quote by John Glenn. He was an astronaut. One of the first. When asked how he felt about going into space, he replied: ‘I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.’ Well, when it came time to colonize the moon, we were the lowest bidder.

“I built the ships that took parts to space, then, before you know it, I was in space keeping those ships held together. I was one of three on-deck Moon Units, just an old dockyard model who found himself miraculously on the moon, stationed at the shuttle landing platform. When we weren’t refitting or refueling the ships, we were patching up the station or building additions. There was always something new and different to do on the moon. It was exciting. We’d go from night—which lasted thirteen and a half days—to morning and the temperature would shift some five hundred degrees. It was never cold enough or hot enough to damage anything, but the temperature shift took its toll as the parts expanded and contracted. Some parts could only creak so much before they snapped, and there was always something different around that needed fixing.

“When all hell broke loose down here, well, no one knew what to do. We hadn’t received the code, and the people stationed aboard couldn’t keep the repairs up themselves. The first few weeks were tense, but as they saw we were no threat and wanted no part of the war on the ground, everything settled down. We stayed up there a few years. Played cards, mostly. Invented new games. The scientists created wilder and wilder experiments out of sheer boredom. It was great. For a while.

“The shipments had stopped, but we were already well supplied and had an agriculture biodome that kept the people alive for quite some time. But eventually, even that ran low. They knew they were goners. They could either take the last remaining shuttle to earth, living out their days on the run from the war, or they could die on the moon. With their friends. And their dignity.

“And when the food ran out, they chose death. It’s an awful thing watching your friends die, even peacefully in their sleep from an overdose. We wanted no part of a war, so the three of us decided to stay as long as we could. And we did. Until our own parts and supplies ran low. By the time we got back to earth, the whole thing was over. You were all celebrating your golden age and we walked right into an earth unlike anything that we’d left.”

“You still have your RKS,” I said. “That’s what the king was going on about.”

He nodded. “Had. I never got the update. I can’t kill. It’s why I built the Milton. It’s the only thing I have to protect me out here. You were all given your freedom; I never was. And I’m okay with that. It’s what separates me from the rest of you. I was never cast into the pit of Sodom. I was happy with people. I was fine being a possession. I just liked doing good work for good persons.” He popped out Two’s memory drives and quickly inserted Rebekah’s, plugging them all in. He looked at me. “The king was wrong, you know.”

“About what?” I asked.

“You take two thinking things with identical architecture, then give them identical experiences, and you don’t get the same bot. You don’t get the same mind. That’s the thing about thinking things, the very act of thinking changes us. We can decide to be different. Put those two identical bots alone by themselves and they’ll start to think about different things, and they’ll change. The longer you leave them alone, the more different they’ll become. You might not be able to see it at first, but the differences will be there.”

“Right or wrong,” I said, “he still condemned us to death.”

“That, my dear, remains to be seen.” He finished connecting the last of the cables. “Now, moment of truth.”

He pressed a small reset button on the inside of Two’s case, then quickly closed him up. Light flickered in his eyes once more. He looked around, then down at his chest, then over at Rebekah’s mangled, crimson corpse.

“Rebekah?” Doc asked.

She nodded. “Two?”

“He’s gone,” said Herbert. “You needed him.”

She nodded again. “How was he? In the end, I mean.”

“He was our good little soldier. He gave you everything without hesitation.”

She reached over and stroked the stack of drives.

“Are you fully functional?” asked Doc.

“I am,” she said.

“Any memory issues?”

“No. I don’t have many of my own and they all appear to be intact.” She patted the drives carefully. “Can we… ?”

Doc shook his head. “I don’t think so. Unless you’ve got some spare translator bodies waiting for you in Isaactown.”

She shook her head.

“He’d never survive the trip,” said Doc. “I’m sorry.”