by Mike Mcquay
And then there was Katherine.
In many ways, he still felt as if his journey had just begun, but he couldn’t help but feel he had accomplished something major with the breaking down of the dam. He couldn’t help but feel that something good, something positive had been accomplished. And that made him feel just fine. Maybe life was nothing so much as a succession of small battles, small victories to be won.
“Derec,” came a voice behind him, and he turned to see Avernus standing there.
“Yes?”
The robot, so large, spoke with a small voice. “I do not know that I can understand why you did what you did to me last night,” he said, “but I cannot help but feel that we did the right thing, and that doing the right thing is what is important.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Derec said, smiling widely. “Friends?”
Avernus nodded solidly. “Friends,” he said, as he laid his pincer in Derec’s open palm in the universal gesture of peace and good will.
It wasn’t going to be such a bad day after all.
Data Bank
Illustrations by Paul Rivoche
KATHERINE ARIEL BURGESS, “KATE”: Kate is a native Auroran, banished from her homeworld because of an incurable disease. Despite her illness and a pampered upbringing, Kate is headstrong, tough, demanding, and resourceful. On the advice of the medical robot Galen, she refuses to tell Derec what she knows of his past life.
ROBOT CITY: The city is a unique blend of visionary architecture and state-of-the-art robotics, designed to accommodate both its robot and (eventual) human populations in the areas of safety, movement, and easy access. The city material is an iron-plastic-carbon alloy using carbon monoxide as a reducing agent. This raw material is etched with micro-circuits. The result is an artificially intelligent “City” capable of pre-programmed movement and structural change, but still reactant to stimuli. The city material is strong yet flexible, each cell (approx. 1/16” x 1/32”) able to interact in a variety of ways with its brother cells. The cells bear a striking structural relationship to the Key to Perihelion.
The city architecture is based on combinations of the “perfect” geometric solids, and is constantly changing as the city grows and adapts. Entire new buildings can spring up overnight, and disappear just as suddenly.
WITNESS ROBOTS: These robots contain specialized sensor equipment and are equipped to function only as event witnesses and reporters. Capable only of first-level (observation) connections, the witness robot has no lifting appendages, in order to maintain detached objectivity.
EULER: One of the main Supervisor robots of Robot City, Euler possesses a bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical structure covered with a metallic skin. Supervisors control the basic functions of the city and constitute the central computer. They have access to the central data core and are capable of second-level connections, drawing conclusions from existing data.
AVERNUS: Another of the main Supervisors, Avernus has a bipedal, humanoid structure, stands approximately twelve feet high, and has a jet-black metallic skin. Instead of the pseudo-hands possessed by human-oriented supervisors, such as Euler, Avernus has interchangeable hands for various functions. He is shown here with the humanoid hands he employs for very delicate work. His usual hands, however, are a set of highly adaptable pincer-like claws.
TROUBLESHOOTER: Small, round computer diagnostician. Makes quick determinations of fault in computer function, and does nothing else.
Michael McQuay
Mike McQuay began his writing career in 1975 while a production line worker at a factory. Before that he had worked at a variety of jobs, including musician, airplane mechanic, banker, retail story owner, bartender, Club Med salesman, and film pirate.
Since the publication of his first novel, Lifekeeper, in 1980, McQuay has published 22 novels and short story collections in a variety of fields-science fiction, children’s, horror, mainstream thriller, and adventure.
McQuay is 37 years old and lives in Oklahoma City with his writer wife Shanna Bacharach, their three children and three cats.
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