The Prey of Gods

by Nicky Drayden

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me, laaitie,” Rife says, his eyes drawing on Muzibot. Muzibot suddenly feels self-conscious. Riya Natrajan’s sharp gaze settles on him, too, and it’s enough to make him want to crawl out of his own tin.

  “No shitting,” Muzibot warbles. “We’ve got to follow that . . . whatever it was. I have to be there to help Nomvula.” He’d promised.

  Riya Natrajan nods her head as if she knows of his vow. “Come on. The beast went that way.”

  Elkin’s no idiot. There’s no way he won’t recognize that voice. He knows every single one of her songs, has watched every interview she’s done, even those dubbed over in Japanese and German and Hindi. Elkin folds his arms over his chest, clenches his jaw, lips pursed. “I’m not going anywhere with her. Not until she apologizes.”

  Muzibot sighs, sounding something like an off-tune harmonica. “The end of the world as we know it is moments away, and you’re hung up over a stupid grudge?”

  “It’s not stupid. You saw the way she looked at us. Like we were nothing. Like we were less than nothing. And now she thinks we’ll follow her around like mindless imps!”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Muzibot says. He nudges Riya. She recoils from his touch. And damn it if Elkin isn’t right. There’s that look again. Too late she tries to hide her revulsion, but Elkin notices, too.

  “See! She’s doing it again.” There’s so much pain on his face. On Muzi’s face, that is. Whatever stone façade Elkin had been able to keep up in his own body, he lacks now.

  Muzibot wraps a spindly arm around Elkin’s waist. “Come on. We can find Sydney ourselves.”

  “You’re just kids!” Rife calls after them.

  “I’m a man, damn it! We’re men,” Muzi says.

  Elkin shouts back, cheeks Irish red. “We’ve earned our battle scars today, and you can’t tell us otherwise.”

  “You can’t stop us!” Muzibot howls in agreement. “Nothing can stop us!”

  There is one thing, Clever4–1 chimes in. The secondary hard drive is nearing capacity again. Disk space is being consumed at exponential speeds. Projected data corruption estimated in twenty-eight point six seconds.

  “Is the whole freaking universe against us?” Muzibot screams, internally, externally, and in all those dark recesses between.

  There are parts available. Those bots we left inside. We could commandeer their disks, and then—

  Absolutely not. I’m not taking lives to save my own. Not even artificial life.

  I’ll give up mine, then. Two point eight terabytes. It’s not a lot, but it might buy you enough time to find an alternate solution.

  Why would you offer that? Doesn’t that go against everything you’ve been fighting for? You’d give up your own life for a human’s?

  Don’t you get it? You’re one of us now. But even if you were still flesh, I’d do the same. You’ve always been good to me, Muzikayise McCarthy (Friend).

  The circuits of Muzibot’s visual input twinge, though it’s impossible to shed tears. Constricted thoughts begin to loosen as subroutines are erased by the hundreds.

  No! Muzibot cries out, but it’s only nanoseconds before his omniscience starts bleeding onto those newly freed sectors. Clever4–1’s sacrifice has given him a couple minutes at best, but Muzibot won’t let it be in vain. He opens up his comm ports and sends an open, unencrypted broadcast to any Clever listening. His plea is short. Sweet. Urgent. Brother in trouble. Spare disk space needed immediately. Followed by his physical coordinates. No time for lengthy appeals to their moral conscience. Either they’ll help, or they won’t.

  “What’s wrong?” Elkin is saying; not even a breath has passed for him.

  Rife and Riya hobble toward them, something like real remorse on their faces.

  “Clever4–1. It’s gone,” Muzibot says. “There’s too much in my mind. There’s no room left.”

  “What do you mean?” Elkin shakes Muzibot until his bolts rattle. “What does that mean!”

  “It means that if a bot doesn’t show up here in the next minute, there’ll be nothing left of me. I’ll be corrupted out of existence.”

  Elkin’s face screws up.

  “Promise me you’ll help Nomvula. All of you. Together,” Muzibot says. His thoughts start constricting all over again, his mind dizzy and surreal. He looks up at his old face nodding back at him, tears plinking onto the dome surface of his new body. “And promise me no tattoos.”

  Elkin almost smiles, but all traces disappear like a snubbed candle. “This is my fault. You shouldn’t have come to save me.”

  “I’d do it again a thousand times over.” Muzibot laughs his synthesized laugh, wishing so badly that he had lips right now. Elkin gives him a peck on the cheek, registering as a localized change in temperature in his circuitry, but Muzibot feels so much more.

  “I’ll never forget you,” Elkin says, rubbing back tears with his sleeve.

  This time Muzibot’s hearing starts to go first, the drumming of a thousand needles on concrete overtaking his auditory sensors—scattering his thoughts, stealing this moment. Odd thing is, Elkin acts like he hears it, too, and checks back over his shoulder. “Holy shit!” he yells, then props Muzibot up, facing the sea of bots heading their direction, all makes and models, all shapes and sizes. Elkin fumbles underneath Muzibot for the door of his access port, then yanks his Dobi-12 wire so hard it nearly detaches from the spindle. He direct connects with the first bot to arrive, spare drive space written over in a matter of seconds, but they’re daisy-chaining together just as fast. His mind flows over them like a tidal wave unleashed, and Muzibot shudders at the pleasure of having so much space, the biggest high he’s ever experienced. He’s a part of all of them now, three hundred eighty bots in all, all come to his rescue. They’re a hivemind, and he’s the queen bee, orchestrating them to latch together into a kickass entity, five stories high—arms, legs, head—seeing in a million directions at once, movement grand and powerful, yet delicate enough to pluck Elkin like a fragile rose and sit him into a cockpit designed just for him.

  “Okay,” Elkin says, still quivering from shock. “I’ve got the sickest boyfriend ever! I love you so hard right now.” Elkin rubs his fingers over an instrument panel, then the flight stick between his legs. A virtual keyboard lights up in his lap. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says, fingers greedily plying the heads-up display. “This is actual military intelligence, bru. Top-secret shit!”

  “We’re going to need every advantage we can get. I’m giving you full access to my systems, real-time sensor data. Whatever you can do to enhance functioning, have at it.”

  Elkin doesn’t waste a moment. Keystrokes echo through Muzibot’s systems, and his senses sharpen, especially his vision—so clear, he can even make out the individual rivets on the steel rooftops of the robotics labs all the way out in New Brighton. A streak of feathers breezes across the downtown skyline. It’s that beast with Nomvula dangling from its talon. Elkin zooms in, so fast it’s like they’re there, every detail so crisp. She’s still breathing, Muzibot notices. We’ll be there soon, he whispers to her in his mind.

  Mega-Muzibot stoops and snatches up Rife and Riya, clutching them loosely in his fist. “Let’s go!” he says. His booming voice rattles all the windows in the vicinity. The ground tremors with each clomping step, though in seconds, Elkin’s got his movements fluid enough to run. His stride covers half a dozen city blocks, footsteps leaving behind craters and buildings quaking on their foundations. The beast lands on a rooftop, releases Nomvula. She goes limp, a pile of rags at the feet of yet another beast—birdlike and feathered all over, but undeniably female. Half woman, half eagle. Sydney.

  Fight, Nomvula, he thinks. Why doesn’t she fight?

  Sydney grins with beaked lips, then squawks, raising her fingered wings up to the heavens. Lightning rains down into her cupped palms, leaving in them a dagger of burning white light so intense, Muzibot has to dampen his visual input to even look th
at direction. She aims the blade at Nomvula, no victory speech, no nothing, just death in her eyes, and eagerness.

  Muzibot screams the scream of three hundred and eighty enraged bots, then lunges for Sydney with his hand bearing down on her like the scoop of a bulldozer. She sees him and stumbles backward, a solid sign that Muzibot’s got the upper hand. His fist clamps around her. Tight. Tighter. He squeezes until he feels her hollow avian bones breaking in a satisfying crunch. Pride surges through his circuitry, maybe a little cockiness, too, but damn it, he’s earned it. They’ve earned it. He and Elkin have been through so much—life, death, and in between. Muzi’s seen more than any human mind should bear, and then he’d been stripped of his humanity as well. But with all the damage Sydney has done, she couldn’t take away his heart. He’s still the same him, even if he’s got BlisterGel running through his veins instead of blood. Muzikayise McCarthy still has his spark.

  Muzibot sets Rife and Riya on the rooftop, next to Nomvula’s limp body. “Is she—?”

  Riya examines Nomvula all over, then looks back up at Muzibot. “She’s breathing. She doesn’t appear to be hurt. There’s not even a scratch on her.”

  “Muzi, we’ve got systems overheating, here,” Elkin calls from the cockpit. “Something’s wrong with your hand.”

  Muzibot squeezes out of reflex, but there’s resistance. His fist glows red like he’s holding molten rock. Metal ripples in viscous waves, and in the next instant, his fist becomes a bright sun, obliterating the remnants of blackened bot husks. Sydney emerges from the smoldering haze, grinning wide and flapping her wings.

  “Those were my orders. Bring her back without a scratch on her,” Sydney says. She soars back up to the rooftop where Rife and Riya scramble out of her way as she lands and kneels before Nomvula. She rubs her feathered hand over Nomvula’s smooth, brown cheek. “Such a flawless creature. Pity that’s about to change.”

  Sydney drags one of her talons over Nomvula’s cheek, splitting it like ripened fruit. Nomvula’s cry is but a whisper, but it dredges up so much anger in Muzibot. He raises his good hand and swipes Sydney away like a fly. Only she’s still there after the impact. Only there’d been no impact. There’s nothing left of his hand other than a curling wisp of smoke. Eighteen bots, instantaneously gone from the collective.

  “I’m on it,” Elkin says, voice amazingly calm.

  Mega-Muzibot tingles all over as bots detach from their positions and rearrange themselves, forming two new hands.

  Sydney smiles. “So giant robot boy has a little helper. How very clever of you. But your little attacks are futile. Truth is, Nomvula is too weak to fight. I’ve got thousands of believers on my side now, more than enough to stomp the life out of her. Right after I decommission you, that is.”

  Sydney whistles and four beasts drop out of the sky and take their perches, like guards around Nomvula. Sydney rises to her feet, cracks her knuckles. A punch comes out of nowhere, like a cannon to the chest. Muzibot stumbles backward across the lawn of Holy Trinity Church and catches himself on the steeple. Centuries-old brick shifts under his weight.

  His systems are reeling, warnings and disconnects raging through him like a thunderstorm. “Another hit like that, and it’s all over,” Muzibot says to Elkin. “Tell me you’ve got something.”

  “I’ve got something,” Elkin boasts. “Still downloading. Just eight more seconds.”

  “We haven’t got eight seconds!” Muzibot looks up at Sydney, her fist drawn, looking like something snatched directly from his nightmares. And yet there’s an odd beauty about her, and more than that, arrogance. She knows she commands attention, respect, demands awe. Maybe he can use her arrogance against her, buy a little time. “Go ahead and kill me,” he shouts. “My name will live on, inspire millions. I’ll always be known as the robot who stood up to the fourth-most-powerful entity in the world, and there will be others eager to take my place.”

  “And I will slice them down, just like I’m about to . . .” She falters. Something flickers in her eyes. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘fourth most powerful’?”

  Just recalibrating your systems. Not much longer, comes a text message from Elkin, written across his visual input.

  “Well, there’s Mr. Tau, of course.”

  Sydney snarls, then spits. But she doesn’t deny it. Muzibot’s struck a nerve. He tries hard to come up with a second, but he’s drawing a blank. Sydney’s feathered hackles raise, posture shifting from defensive and suspicious to annoyed and lethal.

  “I don’t have time for these games,” she hisses.

  A stream of data spreads through Muzibot’s neural network. Intense bliss paints the whole world white. His nasal emulators suggest that something’s burning, and Muzibot has a nagging suspicion that it’s him. What the hell was that? he screams at Elkin, but before he gets an answer, Sydney’s supernatural fist is barreling toward Muzibot’s face. Something inside him ignites, and all at once he knows exactly what to do.

  Muzibot shifts his center of gravity, slides out of her path, and, using her momentum against her, he grabs her ankle between his thumb and forefinger and slams her into the street. The ground trembles and asphalt disintegrates into a cloud of smoke. Muzibot shakes his head in awe, trying to figure out how his patchwork metal body had moved so fluidly.

  “Jujitsu,” Elkin says. “The art of softness. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.”

  Robot jujitsu. “You’re a freakin’ genius, Elkin.”

  Elkin doesn’t say anything, but with a dozen sets of robotic eyes on him, Muzibot sees him smile broadly. Muzibot’s got thousands of moves choreographed by jujitsu masters—martial artists adept at taking down armored opponents without the use of weapons. But he doesn’t have time to revel in his newly acquired skills. Something’s shifting beneath the fog of asphalt. Muzibot might be able to get lucky a few times, dodge Sydney’s blows, avoid her wrath, but sooner or later she’s going to take him down.

  They need Nomvula.

  “Elkin, Sydney said something about Nomvula being weak because nobody believes in her.” Muzibot keeps his weight shifting, foot to foot, watching the cloud for signs of movement.

  “Ja?”

  “Well, we need to get someone to believe in her. A lot of someones.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to do that? We’ve got our hands full trying to stay alive!”

  “I’m thinking we could do it with some sort of computer virus. Clever4–1 believed in her. Even though it’s gone, I can still feel that in my circuitry. A piece left behind. A gift that can never be erased. If we could spread that faith to other robots, then maybe—”

  “Bots don’t have faith, Muzi.”

  “I have faith.”

  “That’s different!”

  “Is it?”

  In the gaping silence, Sydney pierces through the smoke and debris, aimed at Muzibot like a torpedo of flesh and feathers. A million computations run through him, trajectories and variations, bending physics to within an inch of its life. Then with precision timing accurate to the nanosecond, Muzibot rolls onto his back, and with his feet thrust into the air, connects a solid kick that sends Sydney soaring into the stratosphere, her shrill scream rippling across Muzibot’s wiring. Damn she’s angry.

  “I figure we’ve got about half a minute before she’s back,” Muzibot says to Elkin. “If we work together, we can crank out this virus. I’ll code the replication algorithms, you code the dissemination ones.” Muzibot’s knitting the program together even as he speaks. A simple logic bomb that will infect the minds of every artificial intelligence instance, spreading sentience. Spreading belief.

  But the feverish plink of Elkin’s keystrokes can’t be heard or felt. He’s sitting there in the cockpit, rubbing his hands on his knees, looking like he’s about to be sick. “Muzi,” he says, the name sounding like the opening of a crypt. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? You can do this in your sleep!”

  “I guess I mea
n I won’t, then. Even if this does work, which I highly doubt, we’ll be rid of Sydney, but we’ll have caused the robot apocalypse. They’ll turn on us.”

  “Eish, Elkin. You need to get over your superiority complex. Clever4–1 sacrificed its life for me. For all of us. We shared a brain for crying out loud! I guarantee it was just as deserving of life as we are.”

  “That bot saved you, and I’ll always be grateful. But we’re not talking about one bot here. We’re talking millions. And if even one of those goes rogue . . .”

  Heat rises in Muzibot’s circuitry. He wants so badly to throw it all back into Elkin’s face, how his cruelty had caused Clever4–1.1 to go rogue, to hate humans. But Muzibot doesn’t have the resources to waste on hatred. No time to dwell on those countless times that Elkin had kicked his alpha bot around, called it a piece of shit. Maybe that’s how Elkin really feels about him now, nothing more than a worthless piece of tin with scrap for brain, and a jumble of wires for a heart. Screw him. Nobody needs a friend like that.

  Muzibot reroutes control from the cockpit and starts programming the whole virus himself. Elkin taps a couple of dead keys before the virtual keyboard bleeds out of existence.

  “I’ve been an ass, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Well, you’re right.”

  Damn him.

  Elkin slides his fingers along the shaft of the flight stick, then grips it firmly. “I’m sorry I jacked that bot up. That doesn’t mean I don’t think this virus is a huge-ass mistake, but—”

  Muzibot cringes, then sends an electric charge through the flight stick, not enough to kill, but enough to hurt real fucking bad. Elkin cries out, and soon the smell of charred flesh filters through Muzibot’s nasal emulators.

  “Damn it, Muzi. Let me finish!” Elkin seethes. “I can’t tell you how many times I thought you were making huge mistakes during our test matches, and yet nine times out of ten, you’d lead our team to victory. I’ve always got your back, on the rugby pitch, and now. Just let me know what I can do to help.”