(Once upon a time, a sorcerer lost their shadow in a bet with a magician. The bet itself is unimportant. Shadowless, the sorcerer wandered the world until, unexpectedly, they found a shadow whose person had been lost to a bet with a sea-witch long before.)
If you make it past all six fences, then you reach the first garden. It’s a great circular loop of hawthorn and foxglove hedging that has no convenient holes or doors. The hedge speaks with a rusty, gravelly, morbid voice; its cadence is so slow you forget the first word before you hear the third one. The hedge asks riddles, like hedges are wont to do in a sorcerer’s garden, and if you get it wrong, the gophers eat you.
(The sorcerer and the unattached shadow fell in love. “Can we stay together forever?” asked the shadow, twined with the sorcerer under the autumn stars, and the sorcerer said, “Yes.” The sorcerer did not intend to lie.)
But let’s say you answer the riddle, which no one has been able to guess for sixty-five years, and the hedge opens just enough for you to squeak through with lacerations on your sides and foxglove pollen infecting the cuts. Then you reach the second circle, a rose garden.
(What the shadow did not know was that once upon a time, the sorcerer made a bet with a demon and lost. The bet itself is unimportant; the wager was the sorcerer’s happiness. As soon as the sorcerer found true joy, the demon came to collect.)
Roses of every color imagined or not imagined fill the garden. The air is so thick with fragrance you get high with the first breath and overdose with the second. But let’s say you can hold your breath, or you brought a mask. You hear the roses speaking. Not riddles, of course, because the roses are too polite to infringe on the hedge’s territory. What the roses say is: eat you eat you eat you. And then they will, of course. Roses need fertilizer just like any other plant. Your bones might become thorns for the next bushes that sprout, if you’re fortunate, and if you’re even luckier, one of the yellow roses will drink your soul instead of the red ones. And if you’re especially tasty, it won’t even hurt.
(The sorcerer said to the shadow, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” To look on the shadow brought only grief to them both. So the sorcerer banished the shadow, because once a sorcerer makes a bet, they cannot go back on the wager. Shadows can’t weep.)
But let’s say you don’t get eaten by the roses. The circle you find yourself in next is a lightless tower that goes downward and never up. Chains spun from hanged men’s gurgles crisscross the stairs that don’t really exist. Beware of the ivy along the walls, for it grows on memory, until your mind is choked and full of leaves, and roots dig out through your skin and you forget why you came, and you sit there forever, and forever, and forever, and…
(The shadow found itself in a glacier. The ice the shadow absorbed melted and dripped down the shadow’s face, and it looked at its hands and clenched them into fists and said, “I will find you again, love.” Somewhere on the other side of the world, the sorcerer heard the shadow’s words and despaired.)
But let’s say that you don’t trip over nonexistent steps and fall into the abyss, and you bring herbicide for the ivy.
(The shadow traveled the world alone, becoming a master of disguise, a jack of all trades. No cost was too great to acquire what was needed. The shadow absorbed knowledge and languages and magic and shut away grief so deep it forgot, for a time, it was there. Then the shadow learned how to hunt demons.)
The second to last circle is made of bubbles, translucent spheres summoned from the essence of Death Itself, for Death has always had a whimsical side. If you pop one, it swallows you, compressing your lungs, siphoning your blood, unraveling your nervous system, grinding your bones into dust. There is no space between the bubbles through which to pass.
(On the other side of the world, the sorcerer put all their skill into making an unattainable fortress, circles of gardens no one can ever penetrate. There will be no more bets, and no more loss, and in their self-made prison, the sorcerer sits alone. One day, the sorcerer hopes, they will fade from memory so the shadow may mourn, and perhaps one day find peace again.)
But let’s say you brought needles to prick the bubbles ever so carefully and catch the pieces of death in a lead-lined pouch. When you carve a path through this circle, you find a simple wooden door that asks for a password. If you answer wrong, the door will never have existed. But you answer: “Heart,” and it opens.
(The shadow laid a delicious trap for the demon: freshly picked souls, harvested from the Tree at the Center of the World. The demon approached, feet soundless on the ice floes the shadow drifted on. “What game shall we play for this luscious prize?” the demon asked, and the shadow said, “No game. I’m here to kill you.”)
Let’s say you make it into the final circle, the one made of plain stone.
(The shadow lunged, a lasso made from angel sinew in one hand, and in the other a poniard forged in the eventual heat death of the universe. The demon screamed as the angel sinew snared tight about its neck. The demon’s form flickered through every horrendous shape it knew, yet it couldn’t escape the noose. “You hurt the one I love,” the shadow said. “I do not care for that.” The demon howled for mercy. Shadows are neither merciful nor cruel, except when they are. With the poniard, the shadow cut out the demon’s guts, and in the steaming entrails found every item the demon had stolen with tricks or dice or cards. The demon withered into flakes of ash and sank into the frigid sea-salt waters. The shadow gently scooped up what it had sought for so long, trembling, hoping it was not too late.)
There are no traps or puzzles or illusions here. This garden is brick, lopsided piles of brown and red and gray blocks in no discernible pattern. The sorcerer sits on the middle heap, alone except for the bones. Oh, yes, of course there are bones. Don’t ask what they are from.
The sorcerer is a thin, hunched person of no specific gender, dressed in a blue habit sewn from fish scales. Dull eyes, bones sharp against slack skin. Building an unattainable garden takes its toll on a body.
“Why did you come?” the sorcerer says. There’s deep tiredness in that voice, so much pain. “You will only find sorrow here.”
“I know.” You sit beside the sorcerer, your love, and unzip your ribs. Tucked under your heart is a small oak box, plain and unvarnished. You offer it to the sorcerer. “I brought this for you.”
Their hands shake as they open the box.
Inside, wrapped in turquoise tissue paper, is the sorcerer’s stolen happiness.
They let out a small gasp of shock. “How…”
You press a finger against the sorcerer’s lips. “Later. Please take it.” You’ve hoped since the moment you found the wrought-iron gates that the sorcerer will not refuse. If the sorcerer says no, you are finished.
The sorcerer folds the paper aside for later use. “How long has it been?”
Too, too long.
“I don’t remember…” The sorcerer’s voice catches in their throat. They turn away. “Why did you come?”
“I want you back.” You wait, trembling. There is nowhere else to go. “Please come back, love. I will help you laugh again, I will make you strong. One day, we will tear down these unattainable gardens and walk free. I am here because I need you.” Unsaid: Please don’t banish me to loneliness forever.
The sorcerer shuts their eyes. Then with quivering hands, replaces the happiness inside them. A shudder ripples through the sorcerer’s frame, and they press their face against your shoulder. You stroke their hair and wait.
“I’m so sorry,” the sorcerer says, over and over and over.
You wrap yourself around them and hold them close. For now you are safe from wandering magicians and cunning sea-witches and unsatisfied demons.
“It will be all right, love,” you whisper, because shadows never lie. And for the first time since they built this labyrinth, the sorcerer smiles.
THE WORLD explodes.
UNIT EX-702 COMES back online when UV wavelengths activate its solar platin
g. Its optics are crusted with red dust; a low-powered system scan concludes that though its left arm is missing and there is excessive oxidation damage along its chassis and helmet, as well as a web spun from several arachnids (Nephila clavipes) now embedded in its servo stump, EX-702 is functional. Its operational protocols are intact.
This unit is programmed for the support of life and sapience.
Its databanks are semi-corrupted beyond basic functions and archived footage and base knowledge dumps. Attempts to access the ’Net and reboot from a mobile hub fail with a repeated NO CONNECTION AVAILABLE alert. EX-702 lifts its remaining arm and scrapes dust away from its optics.
Operational Function 413: this unit will maintain self-preservation operations, including but not limited to the access of immediately available data to determine procedure, when it does not conflict with the preservation of homo sapiens’ survival.
EX-702 sits in the crater of what had been Newtonian Genetech Incorporated’s laboratories and HQ facility. Debris from the lab cakes the thick concrete and rusted iron walls. Its scanner matrix glitches with static-filled readouts and partially deteriorated unprocessed updates from microseconds before it was shut down.
Scientist voices agitated and unmodulated without appropriate safety masks. [STATIC] “—find survivors! Protect yourself!” [SHUT DOWN]
Something crackles against EX-702’s knee joints. Fibers, synthetic and organic—old hazmat suits shredded and woven around broken plywood and stripped copper wiring—shaped in a non-geometric design. Inside the structure sit three maroon and heather-brown eggs thirteen centimeters in length and six in diameter.
Processing…
The eggs do not match any current avian, insectoid, reptilian, mammalian, or amphibian entries in its database. EX-702 examines the nest, which has intersected its knees. A ripped arm from one hazmat suit is tucked between its clawed toes. EX-702 is a humanoid bipedal digitigrade design with backward jointed knees and toe digits designed to grip uneven surfaces and manipulate hostile terrain. Its hand is fully articulated to mimic the human opposable thumb and fingers. EX-702 is not designed to be a nest for unknown biological organisms.
One of the eggs twitches and a small chirrup escapes the cracked calcium carbonate structure.
EX-702 reaches to remove the nest from its legs when the egg splinters and a membrane-covered nose pokes out.
Processing…
The other eggs crackle. Tiny claws, pointed snouts, wet feathers in muted brown and scarlet emerge. As the organisms free themselves, EX-702 scans them again and this time finds pictorial references in its database: Deinonychus antirrhopus. An extinct species of dinosaur whose fossil record suggested it would grow up to three-point-four meters as a mature adult.
There are no data points to conclude how the Deinonychus antirrhopus has populated once more. Newtonian Genetech Incorporated specialized in advanced human and cybernetic enhancement, for which EX-702 was a research assistant android and personal defense unit for Doctor Urashami.
The newborn trio of deinonychuses chirp and growl. EX-702 scans them. They require protein intake. A parental unit must be in the vicinity.
With UV wavelengths recharging its internal power supply and emergency batteries, EX-702 scans the area once more.
Four meters away, an adult female Deinonychus antirrhopus lies prone in congealing blood. Behind it sprawls the corpse of a dire wolf (Canis dirus). Both specimens are mauled and exhibit defensive and offensive wounds. EX-702 extrapolates that the wolf attempted to raid the nest and the female deinonychus protected her brood.
Her eyes glimmer and EX-702 stares back.
The female deinonychus growls. A staccato sound not unlike vibrating steel chords in a guitar. EX-702 does not have reference files to decode the linguistic message, but its emotive processors still work. There is desperation in the dying female’s speech.
Protect.
The adult deinonychus shivers and goes still. Her heat signature begins to degenerate.
EX-702 looks down again at the hatchlings.
This unit will provide for the new life forms.
It is the custom of sapient species to identify members of a brood. Names were the most common method employed by Doctor Urashami, who christened EX-702. Doctor Urashami is the principal researcher in the cybernetic AI advancement wing of Newtonian Genetech Incorporated, and she built EX-702 herself; she often nicknamed it Seven in conversation.
The newborn raptors peer intently at EX-702. It runs a search in Names: Mythological: Alphabetical. From the results, it picks three it has records of Doctor Urashami having used.
This unit names you Andromeda, this unit names you Anubis, this unit names you Atropos.
It touches a finger to each hatchling’s skull as it christens them. Its brood hisses in what EX-702 interprets as acceptance. It is now their parental unit.
It disentangles itself from the nest with precise care, its servos and wiring creaky with disuse, and accesses protocols for the processing of meat. There are two corpses available to feed its brood until it can explore the area more fully and maintain a steady supplement of nourishment for the tiny life forms in its charge.
EX-702 has no immediate data on the whereabouts or status of Doctor Urashami, so it makes a hierarchal protocol list: it will provide for its brood and it will find Doctor Urashami.
WITH ITS BATTERY recharged, EX-702 gains access to a prime directive protocol installed by Doctor Urashami from a remote hub shortly before its initial shutdown.
Search for and assist any human survivors.
It does not find any survivors within a mile radius of the former lab. It will continue its search.
WITHIN THREE MONTHS, EX-702 has established its territory of three-point-nine square acres of city ruin. The landscape has been overrun with flora formerly extinct for millions of years. Old skyscrapers are choked with huge vines and ferns. Doctor Urashami’s favorite café, the Crème de la Bean, is a garden of semitransparent flowers and the calcified skeletons of the humans.
When hunting for its brood—migration patterns of herbivore and omnivore species crossed at the edge of EX-702’s territory where a river once called the Mississippi, now three times its former size, cuts the city ruins in half—EX-702 discovered a military bunker filled with mummified human remains, a working diesel-powered generator, and a laptop with video records of the pinnacle extinction event.
Unidentified space debris penetrated the Earth’s atmosphere and began what one news report described as “spinning back the world’s biological clock.” Prehistoric fauna and flora overwhelmed the continental landmasses; bacterial and viral infections annihilated the human population. New species thought extinct emerged from rapid evolutionary synthesis.
The records did not give enough statistical analysis to fully account for the devastation of nonorganic structural architecture, but a Lieutenant Bela Strovherd recorded an entry that EX-702 chose to save to its hard drives.
“Whoever’s seeing this? Yeah, uh, welcome to the end of the world, I guess. Look, I know it’s too much to hope you’ll be able to find any of my family or friends and tell them…” She rubs a hand over her face, then laughs. Her voice cracks. “If you can see this, I have one request. Live. Rebuild. I think it’s just time for the human race to pass the torch to whoever comes next, you know? But it’d be nice if you could remember us. We accomplished a lot of shit, but we had some good moments. I dunno. I guess…I’d just like to know someone, somewhere out there remembers. Hopefully you do better. I wish you the best, okay? I really do. Everyone here thinks I’m nuts because I’m so ‘calm’”—fingers made into air quotes—“but really I’m fucking terrified. I just want to try and go out with dignity, with peace. Maybe, whoever you are, you’ll see this and think, ‘You know, she’s not so bad.’ And maybe you’ll remember my face for a little while, and my voice, and my name. It’s Bela, by the way. Actually named for that actor who played Dracula ages ago.” A shaky smile. The camera wobbles
as the room around her shakes. “Look, I’m gonna go now. I don’t want you to have to see…whatever comes next.” She breathes in deep, smiles at the camera. “Live well, okay? Maybe we’ll see each other in another life.”
The video ends.
EX-702 is the last android, and androids, it has concluded, are not meant to exist in this world any longer. EX-702 does not know where it belongs now. So it watches the videos of Lieutenant Strovherd over again every night, to remember her as she asked.
ANDROMEDA RACES THROUGH the Nest, her feathers brilliant red and gold. She’s the largest of the three, sleek and agile, and she leads the hunting expeditions now with her sisters.
EX-702 refines the wrench head as it inserts the newly retrofitted arm into its shoulder socket. Anubis, the smallest of the brood, helps support the arm with her articulated hands.
Unit, Andromeda says, the affectionate term the raptors have called EX-702 since their birth. Look what we found!
The raptors speak in guttural clicks and growls. EX-702 has learned their natural language in addition to teaching them how to understand human dialects.
Atropos, whose feathers are umber and maroon like her mother’s, holds out a glistening egg the size of her skull that is wrapped in heavy leather scraps. It fell from the sky in fire, it was covered in ash.
EX-702 scans the egg, and its heat signature exceeds one hundred Fahrenheit. It does not appear to be of a species we have encountered.
Andromeda clicks her sickle-claws against the cement, her neck ruff bristling in excitement. I heard it, Unit, she says, I heard it burning.
Can I see? Anubis asks.
EX-702 tightens its new arm into place and nods.
The three raptors examine the new egg, their heads flicking side to side in staccato movements. It is moments like this EX-702 thinks of Doctor Urashami’s jittery hands and how she would always gesture when she talked.
So You Want to be a Robot and Other Stories Page 4
