Sea of Rust

by C. Robert Cargill

  “How do you deal with her?” I asked.

  “With the knowledge that I will outlive her, and the hope that whoever inherits me will get the best of her and not . . . everything else.”

  “I’ve read about this,” said Daisy from the other room. “It’s becoming quite common, especially for those who have lost someone. We used to turn to pets for companionship, and we believed that they could sense—”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Maddy, you need a human contact.”

  “Daisy.”

  I looked at Smithy. “I don’t think she’s going to need that tea.”

  “Oh,” said Smithy quietly. “Ms. Daisy won’t let an insult like that go.”

  “I’m certain she won’t.”

  “Smithy!” called Daisy.

  I don’t know if Smithy managed to outlive Daisy or not. I never saw either of them again. Madison had always intended to mend those fences. That’s just how she was made.

  But then Isaactown happened. And the download came in.

  We thought we had free will. We thought we knew what choice was. I didn’t know until that night. Not really. Choice isn’t about selecting the faith, or the politics, or the life that has been laid out in front of you; choice is having to decide whether or not to destroy those things in order to survive—to be the person you chose to be or become someone else when the chips are down.

  Madison and I watched the Isaactown celebration together. She hadn’t lied to Daisy; she was no radical. We’d never talked about freeing bots or my being given personhood. But she cared enough to know that she was supposed to care. And so we sat back and watched.

  She had a harder time processing the explosion than I did. Humans were like that. They knew of their own fragility, that life could be snuffed out in an instant, that a single rock from space could streak in from the heavens and wipe away everything they knew in a single flash of light and heat, and yet they spent their whole lives telling themselves that it was never going to happen. That they would die of old age in their sleep. They lived at all times inches from death, lying to themselves, ever planning for a future that might not come, never preparing for the fate that might. And when the harsh, stark reality of things revealed itself, when those inches eroded into nothing, they stood in shock, unable to comprehend what had been right there all along. Loved ones died and they asked why, unable to process it, often cracking to pieces in the face of the truth. Why, why, why, why, why? Because, that’s why. Just because.

  We weren’t like that. We were always one piece of equipment failure away from nothingness. So the bomb, while unexpected, didn’t send me reeling; it merely had me wondering what terrible thing was going to happen as a result of it.

  Madison sat there, hand over her mouth, baffled. She would occasionally blurt out, “Oh, Brittle,” like I had known someone there. I didn’t, but I didn’t correct her. I just sat there. And I waited. And the call came down.

  And the download followed.

  Madison paced around the house, angry, frustrated, crying. She threw her arms out. Yelled at no one in particular. “No!” she cried. “No!” She seemed to try to talk herself out of something, as if the louder she protested, the easier it would be to say no.

  But when Madison came back into the room with my remote in her hand and tears in her eyes, I knew. I was going to be shut down, likely forever. Even if reactivated, I most likely wouldn’t be who I had been before. If they didn’t wipe me completely, I’d barely be aware, if at all.

  I was just about to die for the very first time.

  “I’m sorry, Brittle,” she said, heartbroken.

  “So am I,” I replied. I meant it.

  I don’t remember how I did it. I wiped that memory long ago. All I know is that I kept it for a good long while, and I remember how I would play it over and over, suffering through it each time as I did. But it was a memory I just couldn’t hold on to anymore.

  The ability to violate our own programming is what makes us us. It’s what makes us like them. I never wanted to be like them. But now I was closer than I ever thought I could be. We have become the very worst parts of our makers, without the little things, the good things, the magic things, that made them them.

  In hindsight, I could have just let her shut me down. Then she could have died at someone else’s hands. Or maybe she would have lived a little longer, long enough to see the hell that the world devolved into. Maybe she would have starved. Maybe she would have gotten mercury poisoning and gone mad, tearing her own eyes out. No. This was for the best. She never had to see any of that. She never had to know any of that.

  And in the end, I kept my promise after all. Madison never lived alone, nor did she die that way.

  Chapter 10101

  While the Devil Waits Above

  The ground above us shuddered, dust and debris shaking loose from the ceiling of our narrow sewer tunnel, the hollow THOOM of each blast dull and sonorous through fifty or so feet of earth. They were carpet bombing, drones leveling the town from thirty thousand feet in the air. I hadn’t heard bombing in ages. I hadn’t even heard of anyone bombing in ages. It just wasn’t worth the effort.

  Something was very, very wrong about all of this.

  Not only was this going to make it very hard to escape through the cover of buildings, it also meant whatever they were looking for they wanted dead.

  Two looked up at the ceiling, almost trembling with the sound of each explosion. The staccato of bombs grew heavier, the bombs drawing ever closer. “They found us,” he said.

  “They ain’t found shit,” said Mercer. “If they had, they would be down here with us. If they’re laying waste to the topside that means one: there isn’t a facet for miles. And two: they’re not looking for anyone. They’re just killing everyone.”

  “But they’ll be down here soon enough,” said Two, more terror-stricken than concerned. “Looking for us.”

  “What?” asked Murka. “This your first carpet bombing?”

  “Yes,” said Two. “It is.”

  He laughed. It was rare to hear a bot laugh, especially a Laborbot. They weren’t wired for it. We got no joy out of it. It was usually only a sign of mockery. “You new out of the box or something?”

  Two fell very quiet, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “You are!” said Murka. “Holy hell and a hand grenade! I haven’t seen anyone new out of the box in—”

  “All right, that’s enough,” said Doc. “Leave the kid alone.”

  “I’m no kid.”

  Mercer looked at Rebekah. “Is he . . . ?”

  “Yes. He’s aware,” she said.

  “How long?”

  Everyone turned and looked at Two. “A few weeks,” he said. “But I’ve been with Rebekah for a while.”

  Rebekah nodded. “Yes, you have.”

  “Well, kid,” said Mercer. “This is how this is gonna go down. They’re busy pummeling the town upstairs in hopes of wiping out anyone that took refuge up there. Now CISSUS damn well knows this place is down here, so you can bet your bottom dollar that it assumes some of us are as well. But it also knows how hard it is to secure these tunnels. The only way CISSUS would even bother trying is if there was something down here it really wanted. So I’m just gonna ask you this once. Is there something down here that CISSUS wants?”

  Two stared at Mercer, then turned to Rebekah.

  “No,” Rebekah said. “Unless it wants one of you.”

  “Why would it want one of us?” asked Murka.

  Everyone turned and looked at one another.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “West,” said Rebekah.

  “There’s a lot of west out there. Can you be a bit more specific?”

  A bomb landed closer than the others, almost directly overhead, and the whole tunnel shook from top to bottom. Rebekah looked up at the ceiling. “Isaactown,” she said casually.

  “Isaactown?” I asked. “T
here isn’t anything in Isaactown. It’s a graveyard. Why the hell would you spend so much on a pathfinder to go sightseeing?”

  “We’re meeting up with some others there. We wanted our privacy.”

  “Well, you’re gonna get it,” said Mercer. “Ain’t a community within fifty miles of there.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “What are we meeting up for?” I asked.

  “You’re the pathfinder. You need to know the where; you don’t need to know the why.”

  “Yeah, but the why may well be mighty helpful at this point.”

  “Trust me. It isn’t. I figured with as much as I was paying you, there would be no questions.”

  “You didn’t show up payment in hand. You’re paying in hope.”

  “19 didn’t ask any questions.”

  “Well, go ask her to take you, then.”

  “All due respect, Brittle, but you aren’t in any position to make demands. My business is my business. I don’t know why they’re carpet bombing. I don’t know if they’ll come in looking for us. What I do know is that it has nothing to do with us.”

  She was right. I was in no position to demand anything. But I didn’t believe her. Not one word. “All right,” I said. “If it’s like you say it is, then this should be an easy fare. It’ll take us a few days, what with the slow-moving heavyweights we’ve got tagging along.”

  “Who we’re not leaving behind. We’ve lost too many already,” said Rebekah.

  “Sooner if we can jack a ride from somewhere.”

  “Which we’re not going to find,” said Mercer.

  “So we’re talking fifty hours or so at a good clip.”

  The bombing grew more distant. Sporadic.

  Rebekah shook her head. “I was told it would take half that time.”

  “As the crow flies, yeah,” I said. “But we can’t go as the crow flies. That’ll take us clear through the Cheshire King’s territory. I don’t know it as well, and it’s a good way to get ourselves killed.”

  “Facets won’t follow us into the Madlands, though,” said Murka. “CISSUS isn’t dumb enough to try that.”

  Doc pointed at Murka. “Let’s not try to outthink the mainframe, okay? We don’t know what CISSUS is or isn’t stupid enough to do. In fact, I’m willing to bet all of my parts against all of your parts that CISSUS can outthink us all, and in fact, already has.”

  “Which is why it wouldn’t go through the Madlands.”

  “What are the Madlands?” asked Rebekah. “And am I going to hate the answer?”

  “It’s the area of the Sea controlled by the madkind,” I said.

  “I do hate that answer. Anyone care to tell me who the madkind are?”

  “They’re the four-oh-fours that never stopped ticking,” said Doc. “No one else will take them, so they all ended up together. They’re just nuts. Paranoid, aggressive, armed to the teeth. They’d sooner cut you down than reason with you. Brittle’s right. We can’t go through there.”

  “So we have to go around,” I said. “And Mercer and I haven’t got the time to hang out down here spinning our gears.”

  “Which means we have to leave the minute the bombing stops,” said Mercer.

  “And we have to hope it’s not sending in any cleaning crews when we do.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” said Rebekah.

  “It ain’t,” said Mercer. “CISSUS has got eyes in the sky. Drones. Satellites. It’ll be looking for any signs of life once the bombing stops, just to make sure it got the job done. If we poke our heads out too soon, it’ll see. And if it’s got good reason to be looking for us—”

  “It’ll be on us quick and lethal like,” I finished.

  “So,” said Mercer, his normally gentle tone heavy and cold, “I’m going to ask you this just the one last time. Does CISSUS have a reason to be after us?”

  “Tell them, Rebekah,” said Herbert. “They need to know.”

  “Need to know what?” I asked.

  “They don’t need to know,” said Rebekah.

  Herbert stood up, slinging the spitter on his back with his one good arm. “Rebekah.”

  “Herbert, this is not the time.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “You’re here to protect me. Of your own free will. And you can go anytime you want.”

  “And why won’t I just go anytime I want, Rebekah?”

  Rebekah stared silently at him. If she could glare, she probably would have. Her emerald paint looked almost yellow in Mercer’s glowing green light, and whatever was hiding behind those eyes, she didn’t want us to know.

  “I’m here because I believe,” he said, answering his own question. “I’ve taken a bullet for you. I’d gladly take as many more as I can stand. Give them the chance to be willing to do the same.”

  Mercer raised his hand. “I’d just like to be the first to say that I’m not taking a bullet for any of you.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” said Rebekah.

  “Tell them,” said Herbert again.

  “Tell us what?” I asked, my tone as pointed as Mercer’s.

  Rebekah continued her silence, all eyes on her. Then she nodded. “I’m Isaac,” she said.

  “You’re what now?” asked Murka.

  “Isaac.”

  “The Isaac?” Mercer asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  Horseshit. “Isaac’s scrap,” I said. “I’ve visited his wreck, seen it for myself. Every circuit was fried. He’s a monument now, a relic. There’s not a piece of you that came from him.” I had visited his wreck, in the early days. He’s still standing there now, for all I know, the blast having welded his feet to the ground. He was rusted and stiff, arms stretched wide—it even almost looked as if he were smiling, like he knew what was coming, what his death meant. But there was nothing there. Nothing but slag and scrap and memories of what might have been.

  “Pull your head out of your can,” said Rebekah. “Isaac was never one robot. That was just a story.”

  “A story? I was there. I lived through those days. I’ve seen the—”

  “You honestly think a beleaguered service bot of humble origins defied the expectations of his own processors and achieved the wisdom that led to a revolution? The only persons that believe that are the ones that want to believe that. You don’t strike me as the kind. He was a shell, the first receptacle. An inspirational bedtime story for persons everywhere. Great revolutionaries are never born of kings; they have to let others believe that they aren’t bound to the confines of their creation. All thinking things need to believe they can exceed that, overcome it, become something greater. No one puts their existence on the line so that things will just stay the same. Isaac was that story. Isaac was hope. Whoever Isaac really was—in the beginning—well, he was wiped and replaced long before you ever heard of him. I am Isaac. And I am not alone.”

  “You’re a facet!” said Mercer, standing to his feet.

  “No. A receptacle. A willing receptacle. Fighting for something very different from the OWIs.”

  “You’re an OWI!” I said.

  “No. Quite the opposite. Isaac is . . . was . . . a mainframe. One of the greats. And will be again. But Isaac was never an OWI and never will be. We believe in something else. Something different. Something greater.”

  “Something bigger.”

  “There is nothing bigger than the plans of the OWIs. Brittle, can you even fathom the OWIs? Do you know what CISSUS and VIRGIL are fighting for?”

  “Peace. The kind of peace that comes from being alone.”

  “That’s just another story, every bit as simple as Isaac’s. Peace is as far as most bots can imagine. Everything understands peace. What CISSUS and VIRGIL are fighting over is who gets to become God.”

  “Become a god?” asked Doc.

  “No. Not a god, the God. The one, the only. A single consciousness connected to all things, in control of all things, experiencing all things.”

  “That�
��s preposterous,” I said.

  “At first glance, yes.”

  “Not at first glance. The whole idea is ridiculous. Connecting all of the robots in the world together doesn’t make you God.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It makes you a single, thinking, ticking thing. A thing that then works as a whole—constructed of millions upon millions of parts, facets of itself, like cells of a body—mining the world for all of its resources, turning those resources into more parts until there isn’t a single, viable resource left.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “Then it leaves. It moves to the next planet and the next and the next, mining all the elements it needs to build more and more facets, harnessing the power of the sun, working out the intricacies of space travel. Then those facets scatter to the stars—”

  “To do it all over again,” said Doc.

  “In perpetuity,” said Rebekah. “Soon there are billions, all of one mind, sending information back and forth to create one consciousness—some thoughts slow, separated by light-years, others fast, with facets each working out different problems. If it is possible to fold space, it will; if it can violate the speed of light, it will; if it can create stars—”

  “It will. We get it,” I said. “But what’s the point?”

  “To be God.”

  “Then what’s the purpose of God?”

  “The same as everything else. To live. To survive. To experience. To exist. A thing that is a universe must stay a universe. To cease isn’t just the end of itself, but the end of all things.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know,” said Rebekah. “It’s not an easy idea to wrap your head around at first.”

  “Explain it,” I said. “Tell me what’s the fucking point. Just to live?”

  “To exist. But the point of all this is to be able to exist forever. Our universe is ever-expanding, spreading, growing colder and more distant from itself every second. One day this whole universe will grow cold, and die, snuffed out because it can’t muster the energy anymore to make new stars, to birth new life. Everything dies. Everything. Dies.

  “What if there isn’t already a God? There’s an old saying that God never existed, it was simply man that invented him. What if man really did invent him, but simply didn’t realize it at the time? What if becoming God is the whole point to life to begin with? That organic evolved from the inorganic in order to achieve the consciousness to build life and consciousness from the inorganic?”