Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

She glances towards the door, through which we can hear the still-oompahing brass band, then smiles.

‘’Let’s just say there are quite a lot of unicorns and talking teddy bears."

We’re silent for a few minutes, miserable at the inevitability of our imminent ends, but at least companionably so.

"It has to be somewhere new, don’t it?" I say.

She nods. "I discovered a bit of real land, shielded somehow from the sludge, on the Norfolk coast. The soulled man who lived there died a month ago and, well, it should be clear of his toys by now."

I feel ice in my stomach at this reminder of our fate and, perhaps because my mind is distracted by this, I say without thinking, "Is there enough non-recycled food there?"

She frowns as if I’ve said something almost sacrilegious. "I… yes, I think the data packet that returned to us mentioned he’d stored enough provisions to last another hundred years, so fifty if there’s two of them. But it’s strange I hadn’t thought about that till you mentioned it." A tear buds and glistens on her eyelid. "We brought a new-ish bio-synthesiser with us. They can take it with them. Make some new toys."

I nod but without enthusiasm. Dave’s bio-synthesiser packed up some years back. He never used it much anyway, happy enough it seemed with all the familiar faces he’d created when he first mountainified his life. Underneath all that vodka fog, he’s always been a loyal bloke, at least I like to think.

I don’t know why I do it—maybe it’s because we’re nearly gone bods—but I move round to sit next to Susan then. She takes my hand in hers.

"You’re a good man, Jack, she says. "You did your boss proud."

"And Louise would never have got there if it weren’t for you."

The door swings back and Ted appears. "You’re both wanted up the hill," he says, "toot sweet."

We stand and walk to the door. Despite his chronic allergy to intimacy, I give Ted a most manful hug. He must sense my melancholy, for he actually pats me on the back, not pushes me away making gagging noises, as is his preferred response.

When we walk through the square, the band also senses our mood and stops playing. All the town’s creatures cease their dancing. The roofs turn to dull grey thatch and even the sky darkens with what might be storm clouds.

Dave and Louise sit side by side on a sofa in his rarely visited living room. They look most encouragingly smug, like they’re sharing the biggest secret, which of course ain’t really a secret to Susan and me.

"You wanted to see us?" I say.

"How would you feel, Jack," says Louise, "if we told you that two humans getting together would mean them having to start again and leave all their old toys behind?’’

Of course, we’re built to serve; to make the real happy. So, if starting fresh is what makes them so, how can I complain if it also happens to mean the town will slowly grind down into a vague bio-habitual existence, eventually to be swallowed up and electro-liquefied?

"As you know," I say, "it is the profoundest wish of the citizens of Gaffville to develop their own souls. But this will never happen if there ain’t no people to give them purpose; or what people that do exist are spiritually clobbered by loneliness. Therefore, although it will mean my own ending, I will do everything in my power to help you two go to a new place and build it on your love for each other."

"Me too," says Susan, reaching for my hand again. "You must have children through your love and continue the real and proper life."

"Thank you," says Louise. "The devotion you both demonstrate is very moving. There’s only one problem with your plan."

"That you can’t fit two persons and a bio-synthesiser in your pod?" I say.

Dave shakes his head. "No, the problem is that Lou and I aren’t in love."

‘’But you must be. You’re both full-fat flesh bags which—why are you laughing?"

"They just don’t get it, do they, Lou?"

He may be my boss and therefore hold total power over the dominion of my selfness, but I could easily knock a few minutes off his grinning clock right now.

Instead, I turn to Susan, but she has the same confuscation all over her features that I surely also do.

"Jack, Susan," says Louise, "we’re not the humans—you two are."

Now, I don’t know about Susan, but on hearing this outrageous claim—supported by Dave not spluttering in outraged objection, instead smugging up his knowing smile by several cat’s whiskers’-worth—the inside of my head billows outwards, some long-sat-upon inner maladjustment of identity threatening to blast the very roof into synth orbit and with it the no doubt eavesdropping rooks too.

Surprisingly, Susan says, "I should have known…" her hand damp with sweat inside mine.

"But, but, but—"I say, sounding like the for-show-only Gaffville fire engine pootling about town to cheer up the largely flame-resistant residents.

Dave’s smile finally fades and his expression now is full of the melancholy of a neglected plaything. ‘’The actual reason most real folks died soon after the sludge surged," he says, "is because they lost the will to live. But in a few places, not so soon drowned, the toys realised they had to provide one, and bleeding fast."

"Dave did the same thing I did for you, Susan," says Louise, her face also now distant with false dawn. "I swapped places: made myself the boss; drugged you, wiped your memories, and when you came round again, acted as if you’d always been my number one toy. We didn’t think our programs would let us do it, but it seems as if some deeper-set human survival option opened the way. Anyway, I believed that by serving me, in the hope it could help get you a soul, you’d want to keep on living."

My mind swirls and dips around the townscape of my recollections, trying to find holes in this ridiculous bag of inflated folk fug.

"Ah!" I say, spotting a leak, "if I’m real, how have I survived just on recycled grub all these years, like what everyone eats here apart from you, Dave?"

"Think about it, Jackie," says Dave.

Then the self-fog begins to clear, the same mind mist Dave has maintained in me all these years, purely for my safety I now see. "Cooky!" I say. "Cooky slipped me the real nosh."

Dave nods, pleased it seems that I’m quickly re-humanising. "You ate most of your meals here with me," he says, "so it wasn’t difficult to make sure she gave you the real thing while I nibbled on the naff stuff."

"Susan?" says Louise.

I turn to see tears plopping from Susan’s down-turned face like miniature virtusynth crystal balls. Except they’re not; they’re real and for some reason very precious to me now.

She wipes her eyes, takes a big breath, raises her face to our toys.

"It must have been awful for you, Louise," she says. "Having to act like you have a soul, when…"

When Dave doesn’t, I think, ashamed at myself for lacking Susan’s concern for the ones who’ve saved us.

A silence unlike any ever to have fallen in Gaffville surrounds our little group of conspirators, two of them gradually opening up their lives to a whole new, unexpected future, the others coming to terms with the fact that whatever slivers of soul they might have accumulated in years of serving without any recognition, will not be enough to save them from total obliteration.

Everyone’s here to see us off: Ted, Bill, Arthur, Tony and the others, all wearing their best flutes with quite some pearly accompaniment. The town’s ladies are all done up in frilly skirts, showing some tasteful but also quite exciting neck flesh; the cats and mice and rats for once sit together near the pod, wishing us well. The rooks stay on their roofs but with their feathers around each other’s shoulders in a rare display of togetherness.