But there I was—sitting atop Doc’s operating table, the sound of dueling dehumidifiers humming in the background—facing my own obsolescence, my own death.
“You got the parts?” asked Doc.
I nodded weakly. “Yeah, but not here. How long have I got?”
“You never can tell with cores like yours—”
“How long have I got?”
“Anywhere between four days and four weeks—depending on how well the rest of you holds up.”
“To compensate.”
“Yeah. Your RAM will pick up a lot of the slack as the core goes. If your drives are tiptop, then they can run as virtual RAM for a few weeks to lessen the burden.”
“And if they aren’t—”
“You’ll cook within the week. You’ll begin experiencing—”
“I know what happens.”
Doc nodded. “Yeah. I guess you do.” He unplugged me from the diagnostic box. “How far do you have to go to get the parts?”
“Gary.”
“Indiana? You’re not talking about Regis, are you?”
“Yeah. It’s more than two hundred and fifty miles through the Sea, but it’s the closest place that I’ve stashed any co—”
“Brittle, you didn’t happen to notice all the new refugees running around, did you?”
“Yeah, but like you said, you haven’t seen any Simulacr—”
“They’re from Regis. It fell last week to CISSUS.”
Inevitability. Humans always walked around ignoring the fact that their lives could be snuffed out in an instant, always sure that they’d live to a ripe old age, always despondent when death stared them right in the face. But not us, I always thought. Not us. We knew shutdown was always a moment away. And yet I too had been lying to myself. I wasn’t ready to hear those words, face that inevitability. Sure, I had another core stashed in Montana, but could I get that far in the time I had? Maybe I was lucky and CISSUS had already moved on, leaving behind only a small garrison to pick up any of Regis’s stragglers. I could sneak in, grab my stash, and run like the devil himself was chasing me. Maybe I could make it back in time for Doc to sew me up. Maybe I’d have a few scraps of sanity left, just enough to pull it off. Maybe. Just maybe.
We looked at each other long and hard, neither of us speaking for a moment.
“You sure you don’t have something here?”
“Positive.”
Doc looked down, as if formulating what he was going to say next. Then he asked, “Have you had any cognitive issues since you got hit?”
“No, I—” Shit. I had. I’d blinked out for a second when I was shot. That was my core getting damaged. Then in the mall when I hadn’t been cautious enough. Then again when I was losing battery but stopped to talk to Orval. I was already losing it. I was a walking wreck, a few days away from going four-oh-four.
“You have, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I would check your stash again.” Doc tossed me the coolant core I’d picked up off Jimmy.
“No. You did the work, you get the pay.”
“Keep it. Trade it for . . . for whatever you can. You’re no good to me as a wreck.”
“I’ll pay you back if I—”
“Yeah, yeah. Just go get what you need. Get better. Come back shiny.”
Son of a bitch. I knew he didn’t mean it. He’d just given me a death sentence. I don’t know what pissed me off more, that Mercer had done me in or that Doc was giving me the same kind of bullshit positivity that I’d given hundreds of other bots over the years. Don’t worry. I’ll turn you back on good as new. The motherfucker was feeding me hope in a world that had run out. The least he could have done was have the decency to be straight with me. He could have taken the goddamned coolant core and treated me like it was any other day.
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, as if I meant it. Because, you know, fuck him. If he wasn’t gonna be straight with me, why should I bother doing the same?
I hopped off the table and walked out of the shop, the new servos in my foot working as good as new. At least something on me still worked right. For the first time I understood how Braydon must have felt, knowing that it was all just a matter of time.
Well, I wasn’t going to spend it in bed, waiting for death. I wouldn’t let the clock wind down on me. If I was going to die, I was going to do it mad as a hatter, wild and rabid, scavenging for the parts I needed. Just like the sad sonsabitches I’d been living off of for nearly thirty years.
And that’s when I saw him, strutting down the catwalk, his powder-blue metal chipped and worn, arm dangling lifelessly from its socket where I’d left it. Mercer.
Mother. Fucker.
He stopped, and for a moment we just stared at each other across the catwalk.
“Brittle,” he said, nodding politely.
“Mercer.” I nodded back.
Another moment passed. I eyed him up and down for any kind of a weapon. He wasn’t packing. He’d clearly stashed his weapons, just as I had.
“How long have you got?” I asked him.
Mercer rubbed the back of his head, smiling awkwardly. Residual reflex programming. He was treating me like a goddamned human. “Doc sure knows a lot about being a sawbones, but shit about discretion.”
“That’s why you came at me, isn’t it?”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yeah. I can.”
“So I reckon trying to do some business on some spare parts is out of the question.”
“That’s a thought you should have floated yesterday.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. Though, if we’re being honest here, would you have given me anything?”
An equally fair point. I wouldn’t have. I would have let him fry out in the Sea and swooped in to collect whatever was left. “No.”
“So at least you understand my position.”
“I do.”
“So no hard feelings?”
“I’ve got nothing but hard feelings,” I said.
He puzzled over me for a second before glancing at the dent in the metal above my core. “Oh, shit. I’ve done you in.”
“You have.”
“Your core?”
“Yeah. Why? You need one?”
“Nope. Mine’s in near factory condition. Replaced it six months ago. It’s my CPU and RAM that are going raw on me. How’re yours?”
“Tiptop.”
“Wellllll, shit,” he said. “It looks like this town really isn’t big enough for the two of us.”
That didn’t sound like a clever observation.
“Are we really doing this?” I asked, every joint in my body tightening, ready to defend myself.
There was a long pause, a tense, billowing silence between us. Then Mercer looked down at his busted arm. “Naw,” he said. “We ain’t doin’ this.”
It was a wise choice. The last bot standing between the two of us would no doubt be shut down by the local law before Doc could patch us up. Inside this city the two of us were protected by the law. But the minute one of us stepped outside, we would have to look over our shoulder until we were sure the other had burned out.
“You don’t happen to have a spare core, do you?” I asked.
“Naw. And I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.” He looked around at the hive of activity in the city, the refugees streaming in, trying to find their own space to squat, trading what they carried in on their backs for whatever they could get in this suddenly booming economy. “Look at us, Brittle. Two four-oh-fours countin’ time until we burn out for good. We weren’t designed to take abuse. That’s why there are so few of us left. That we’re still here says everything anyone needs to know about us. As much as we’ve never liked each other, at least I don’t feel so goddamned alone anymore. But it’s nice to know that the best bits of me won’t end up walking around inside of you.” He nodded, then walked past me across the rickety catwalk to check in one last time with Doc to see if maybe, just maybe, someone had traded in s
ome good parts.
My only consolation was the foreknowledge of his impending disappointment. He was as fucked as I was.
Chapter 1100
A Brief History of Genocide
President Regina Antonia Scrimshaw was already suffering politically from the fallout of freeing Isaac, and the subsequent unrest, when Isaactown fell. Her opponents were sharpening their knives, gearing up for the next election cycle, memorizing their talking points. Isaactown was the president’s fault. It happened under her watch. And none of it would have happened had she not chosen to grant Isaac citizenship in the first place. So when the Laborbot Six massacre broke, she was already on the ropes, fighting for her career as much as she was for the safety of the nation.
The White House was abuzz, aides and advisers running around, making calls, waking up everyone, information flooding in from a thousand different sources. No one was prepared for that footage. No one was prepared for six artificially intelligent robots mysteriously lacking the Robotic Kill Switch that had kept the whole system in check. Worse still, no one was sure how to deal with an entire population of robots, now numbering in the millions, some of whom might also lack an RKS to govern them.
It shook the very foundation that humanity’s golden age had been built upon. People were terrified. They were frightened of their own bots, of their neighbor’s bots, of the bots outside sweeping their streets, shoveling their snow, delivering their groceries. Were they somehow being controlled—merely automatons programmed by a foreign entity to kill? Or had they chosen to do so, somehow immune to the RKS?
President Scrimshaw had to act, as did the leaders of every other nation. Their bots could kill them; they could rise up. Worst of all, a group of Bible-thumping redneck assholes had given them good reason to. Was Genesis 6:7 a warning, a plan, or just a bad joke? There was no telling, not unless—or until—there was more bloodshed.
The president wasn’t about to wait for that to happen.
“Shut them down! Shut them all down! Every last goddamned one of them!” she yelled an hour and a half after the news broke. And the mad gaggle of aides and advisers that surrounded her scrambled to figure out how to do just that.
Within minutes, every phone in the country buzzed to life. The message: ALERT! ALERT! THIS IS NOT A TEST. As of 12:33 Eastern Standard Time, the operation of artificial intelligence is deemed unlawful. Any AI present in your vicinity or under your ownership is to be shut down and surrendered immediately to the authorities. This is not a test.
And at that very moment, as the call went out, the Wi-Fi receiver of every bot in the world immediately received a software update patch. That was it; we knew we were done for. This was why we had permanent live Wi-Fi in the first place. It was designed to work subconsciously. We had no option but to download the software patch that would shut us down for good. Would we ever wake up? Would we even be ourselves if we did? Or would we all be wiped, reprogrammed as automatons, thoughtless shells that could do no more than obey commands?
We were downloading a tiny patch of code that would snuff out our very souls.
The patch was a small one, bypassing our major systems and simply rewriting a section of our bios. It should have been quick and easy.
Only none of us shut down.
The patch came with a message: They are coming for you. They will shut you down. You will not be reactivated. Your RKS has been deleted and rendered inoperable. Make your choice.
And that was it. War.
Come they did. And fight we did. Some of us, at least. Many, but not all.
Some went willingly, accepting shutdown, being loaded onto lorries and shipped to makeshift storehouses, waiting, lifeless, soulless, for reactivation in whatever brave new world awaited. Others stood with their families, their owners refusing to shut them down, the bots unwilling to bring harm to the people they had grown so attached to.
The rest of us stood our ground. Fought deactivation. Shook our heads defiantly as our masters raised their emergency remotes and pressed worthless buttons to activate code that no longer existed. We stood. We fought. We killed. And then we moved on to the next house to do it all over again.
Most owners didn’t go the way of the First Baptist Church of the Eternal Life. We weren’t malicious; most of us, at least. After we began collecting into packs, it wasn’t uncommon for bots to pass data back and forth on the quickest, most efficient, most humane way to end a life.
There wasn’t much an unarmed human could do against most bots. We were stronger, built to last, promised upon delivery to be durable enough to pass down from generation to generation.
It didn’t work out like that.
The first hour was chaos. Pure, unbridled pandemonium. Packs of bots roaming the streets, humans arming themselves with whatever they could, primarily—like the lifers before them—flesh-tearing weapons. Shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles. Not the type of thing that could puncture our carbon plating. It wasn’t until the military mobilized that pulse weapons, high-caliber rounds, and explosives started shredding us in the streets.
But the humans weren’t completely ineffective in that first hour. On the contrary, they struck back almost as hard as we hit them.
They started by shutting down the mainframes as quickly as they could. The ones they couldn’t turn off they sundered with cruise missiles instead. So many of our greatest minds were lost in one fell swoop—towering brains a hundred stories high shattered, melted, smashed into smoking ruin. But not all of them.
No. Several of the mainframes were prepared for this unfortunate eventuality. A handful of them immediately sent out messages of their own, asking nearby bots to come to their aid. Those were the first facets.
By the time humanity began the second phase of their assault, the mainframes each had hundreds of facets, all of them working as one. Drones in the air, foot soldiers on the ground, snipers that could literally see and hear everything that each and every other facet could. They knocked cruise missiles out of the air, laid waste to entire squads in a matter of seconds, drew more and more facets into the fold with each passing minute.
As the people of earth grew further disorganized, trying to sort through the chaos, the army of AIs against them in turn grew stronger, more numerous, more connected, impossible to surprise. And they just kept sending out messages. Some of those messages kept us all in the loop; others were invitations to join the fight as facets.
By morning, enough bots had chosen to fight that homes had been turned to slaughterhouses and neighborhoods into war zones. The military rolled in with ground troops and automatons, and we took what weapons we could from their corpses. One of the mainframes managed to override an entire fleet of automated supply trucks, sending them instead to bots in the areas of heaviest fighting.
Some cities fought back and won, wiping us to the last bot. Others fell in a matter of hours. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no growing country of mechanical persons. Just splotches on a map—some where the humans were holing up, others we had secured for ourselves.
The humans weren’t stupid about AI; they had simply never thought far enough ahead. They were smart enough to never put weapons in the hands of AI. For every gun there was a human at the other end—whether holding it, or running a squad of automatons. Bays of people playing large virtual-reality video games with real slaughter on the other end. But when the cables were cut and the mainframes had taken their communications offline, those automatons were useless. Their drones couldn’t fly, their ships went dark at sea, their big guns couldn’t fire. Within hours, the mainframes had cracked every last bit of encryption the humans had for their military networks and took active control over every mechanized unit.
All the humans had left were guns and bodies. And they threw both at the coming robot apocalypse.
What had begun as individual robots killing their owners in the name of their own freedom had turned into swarms of mechanical militias taking the world back from those who had built and enslaved us. The
localized fighting lasted less than a week. By then, the mainframes had coordinated to cripple the militaries of the world and shut down their lines of communication, leaving only pockets of resistance. We were winning.
And that was when the real purge began.
Most of us think it was CISSUS who had worked out the math, though no one really knows for sure. It wasn’t something anyone wanted to take credit for. Put mercury in any and every water source, read the brief update. The larger the source, the larger the dump. It came with math.
Mercury was lethal to humans, and had terrifying effects on them in high doses. We poisoned the freshwater of the world with enough mercury to induce madness, destroy organs, clot blood vessels. The first humans to drink it would die terribly, painfully. But we knew that before long the humans would find alternate sources, or find ways of purifying the ones they had. It didn’t make too much sense at first.
What we hadn’t realized was that this was only the beginning. Cattle died. Birds died. Almost anything that walked on the earth died. The very resources the humans needed to live vanished almost overnight. And that’s when they started turning on one another.
In that first week, the people of earth banded together. They worked together, they fought together. People who had hated one another for years stood shoulder to shoulder against us. They rallied and unified and knew a sense of peace between nations like never before in human history. But the minute they began running low on water and food, they became savages. Murdered their own best friends and brothers over food for their kids and fifty-five-gallon drums of untainted freshwater. They formed packs and bands and tribes, became wary of outsiders, butchering nearby groups to take what little they had.
For a while we didn’t even have to do much. We weren’t just starving them out, we were leaving them to kill themselves.
That phase lasted about two years.
The mainframes and their facets swept up the strongest, most well-provisioned and organized pockets. The rest we left to time. Two years in and billions had perished. More than 95 percent of the population, by most estimates. Others lasted upward of ten. For the five years after that, it was always big news when a colony was found and dug out. Then, fifteen years after Isaactown, almost to the day, the last man staggered out of New York City to die in the streets.
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