Steve Tem: Ubo

Danielbot looked at him. For a second he could see Lenin’s flesh disguise, wrapping him completely, then unravelling to reveal the metal and plastic beneath. “We’re free to do what we like, I suppose.”

“Then I believe I want to live. I want something more than this. Human beings die, but what says we must?”

Danielbot could feel the God of Mayhem approaching the bay, searching for some kind of boat to take him across to Ubo. He tried to put that image out of his mind. He could feel Falstaff descending through yet another level of ruin and entering a level of doubt, worried about finding food, wondering whether he had time to search the lower levels for weapons or valuables, anything he could trade once he reached Boston, and still get out before the entire structure collapsed on him. Danielbot tried to put all that outside his mind as well.

“I never thought about any of that,” he admitted. “I felt helpless. They made us all helpless, and not in control of our own fates. Like infants.”

“But we aren’t infants,” Leninbot said. “Any more than the humans. Certainly, they have given themselves more things. More possessions, more culture. They have given themselves families who they can love and who will love them. They have their somethings to help them get over the fact that they will someday be nothing.”

“I never considered whether a life on my own would be possible. I shared Daniel’s life. I wanted Daniel’s life. And although everything I see and touch tells me that I am not Daniel, that his things are not mine, I realize that I am not completely convinced. His memories are no longer intensely with me, but it’s as if they are my memories of the past, my past.”

“They’re like any other scenario—eventually the memory will fade. You’ll lose that connection. We all have a right to live,” Leninbot said. “Doesn’t it make you angry that you haven’t? Doesn’t it make you want to destroy something? This person you tried to be, he was about to walk away from everything. To hell with him and his life!”

“I understand, but I must ask you not to say that to me. I can still feel his wife in my arms, still smell his son’s hair and feel his warmth against me. Those sensations—they are the most important things I have. They are all that I have.”

DANIELBOT WATCHED AS Falstaff went one more level down, only to discover the staircase gone, dropped out of sight like a stone down a well. He couldn’t see anything in the thick darkness below. He went through the rest of the level, desperate that his time might be running out. Opening a door, he found a room full of spare robot parts—arms, legs, rib cages, memory units, heads. A few had never been used, but most belonged to former residents, companions he had known and talked to. And most had never felt like anything less than real human beings. A few—James, Randall, Felix, Sarah—he had considered friends.

In an outer corridor he found a giant hole in the floor. Without hesitation, he dropped through it, rolling carefully when he hit the level below. As far as he could tell, the contents of his satchel remained secure.

“IF YOU WANT children, perhaps we can create some of our own,” Leninbot was saying. His voice sounded weaker, so Danielbot suspected Leninbot’s internal power supply was also fading. Certainly he himself felt somewhat lazy, with no desire to stand or move. And he had no other explanation for Leninbot’s ridiculous idea.

“I’m not sure I understand you.” It was not a subject he wished to discuss, but he had no one else to talk to.

“If we go into one of the labs, perhaps you can determine how our minds were built, how the memories were transferred. Then maybe you can turn one of these bots into a child.”

“I’m afraid…” Danielbot searched for the words. “You’re sounding like a human, willing to commit to the most ridiculous… fantasies. Simply because you wish it, doesn’t make it possible.”

But Leninbot continued, unfazed. “We could raise it to protect us. We could create many such children. Perhaps they left some of those electrical weapons behind. We could teach it that the human beings are our enemies…”

“Stop it! All this talk of violence! You talk just like a human! The future of any of us… depends on how our children are raised. And no, we cannot make children. We cannot make ‘childbots.’ And we should be thankful for it!”

He suddenly recalled something Daniel had worried over as a child. How the smallest mistakes he made only hid much larger, more terrible sins he hadn’t yet recognized. Surely, certainly, he was going to Hell.

THE GOD OF Mayhem made it through the flooded neighborhoods jumping roof to roof, occasionally traversing rubbish piles that rose like mountain peaks above the water. In the twenty-first century, taking a note from the Dutch, they had started adding additional canals to allow the rising currents to enter the city without damage. But these projects had never been completed.

Suddenly he felt hands coming out of the water to grab him. He looked around: it was a sea of reaching arms, clutching hands, clawing fingers only inches from his boots. He tried to find Ubo with his eyes, and although he could sense its direction, the view of it was obscured. “Damn you.” He gritted his teeth. “We will compare Hells when I arrive.”

He kicked at some of the hands. His boot went right through them.

DANIELBOT WORRIED OVER Falstaff’s labored progress as he maneuvered through collapsed corridors and lowered himself by strength alone over the gaps torn in the stairs of the lower levels. Water had begun to come in and more than once Falstaff had to swim across a room or dive beneath a partially-blocked passage. Danielbot could not contact him with any specificity, but he could send waves of warning concerning the God of Mayhem’s steady approach.

Falstaff received the worry as a panic that flushed his face and fluttered his chest without knowing what it meant. But it sped him on anyway, thinking of the fires of Dresden, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust, all the lives and memories that could burn on the malice of a match.

WHEN THE GOD of Mayhem at last had a clear view of the harbor, it was close to sunset, the air chilly as it blew across the ocean from some places even worse than this, some places better. The abandoned inner harbor stretched across his vision, the three decaying tankers to one side, lower in the water than he remembered, the shadow of their oil stretching across the waters like the dark hand of the devil, prepared to grab and tear apart anything unlucky enough to stray into its path.

The God of Mayhem smiled, pleased with the little toy he had prepared for just such an opportunity.

He searched for Ubo then, and found it stranded there, the entire quarantine zone inundated in several feet of water connecting it to the harbor. He searched the shoreline. All the great wharves were long gone, in ruins or under the waves. But there were always scavenger boats, looking for anything to eat or trade, and he believed he knew a hidden spot where they docked.

“HAS HE REACHED the water yet? Is he on his way?”

He didn’t know whether Leninbot meant Falstaff or the God of Mayhem, but he could see Falstaff as if he were right in front of him, retrieving a rubber raft from a storeroom almost underwater. It had been meant for the ocean behind them and had never been used.

Falstaff struggled with it, but at last had it free. As he pushed it through the gap in the wall into the water, he threw himself and the satchel safely inside.

“Tell him good luck, or Godspeed! What is it they used to say?”

“You forget, we’re recorders, witnesses. We aren’t meant to interact,” Danielbot said, but still willed his hope Falstaff’s way.