Robogenesis

by Daniel H. Wilson

  I know this because they talk to me.

  Gracie found me a month ago, in the night. The little girl’s voice was soft and afraid and urgent. Broken into bits and snatches by some interference, it crept like a whisper into my mind as I lie on the gritty asphalt shingles of a half-collapsed roof.

  I’ve been roaming the abandoned, overgrown suburbs west of the Hudson River for months. Found a good house to camp in during the middle of winter. When Gracie called, I was watching the stars with one hand wrapped around my trusty antenna. Still sifting the night skies for information on my brother.

  “Mathilda Perez . . . Gray Horse Army. I don’t know who you are or if you can hear me . . . need you . . . family needs you. Something bad . . . words in the sky. If it reaches us . . . to die. Please . . . did in Alaska . . . help us.”

  The transmission had a geo-tagged file attached: a location west of Pittsburgh and a low-resolution image of a little girl. She is about nine. Her skin is dark brown and her hair is woven into tight braids threaded with bright bits of plastic. Her eyes are gone and I can tell it must have happened toward the end of the New War. She has an advanced variety of ocular implant. Thinner than mine, made of a pale white ceramic instead of black metal. It sits pooled in her empty eye sockets like milk.

  Timmy says I’m close enough to save her. He says that I can keep searching for Nolan with my eyes in the sky and it doesn’t matter where I do it from. He says Gracie will die if I don’t find her, that she will be hunted down and murdered like a lot of other sighted kids.

  I send my prayers radiating into the skies, and hear nothing.

  In the woods these past months, I have been small and alone and cold. My arms and legs and fingers are weak. I’m constantly falling down or getting scratched by branches, running away from the sounds of big things in the darkness. The wasp sting of Thomas’s betrayal has faded to a dull ache. Even that has almost faded under the constant physical pain of being on the run.

  I’m always hurting. But I’m never lost. And I’m never hungry.

  The satellite uplink is clean out here. Rob isn’t hunting anymore. Wells are common and easy to spot. And a lot of houses are intact. Millions of people answered evil phone calls in the first few days and never came home. That, or their cars took them off a bridge. I can push between weedy tree limbs and find any house with intact windows. Load all the canned vegetables and soup and beans that I can carry into my backpack. Dry-swallow a handful of vitamins and pocket any antibiotics and Band-Aids. I try not to see the faded drawings still stuck to refrigerators. I ignore little coats hanging on hooks and dog-food bowls out for animals long feral.

  At least I have a friend: Tiberius.

  I found natural machines all over the woods: pea-sized armored bugs that seem to eat bark; floating poofs of some kind of synthetic animal that hang on the wind; and once, with a rusty shovel, a wriggling mess of something like earthworms. The naturals aren’t as common as animals yet, but they’re finding a place in our world.

  The stag that I spotted by the swing set followed me for a week. Reaching out to him with my thoughts, I found that he was friendly. Not smart, but trusting. After seven days, I walked out into the unprotected middle of a cul-de-sac in a dead suburban neighborhood. Even though we were both afraid, the six-foot-tall deer also came out. I patted him on his nose and fed him a handful of moss, and this time nobody shot at us.

  I named Tiberius after a Gray Horse soldier we lost in the Yukon. Ty was one of the first casualties and he didn’t deserve to go so soon. The machine is huge but gentle, like his namesake. Ty would have approved; they were both vegetarians.

  In the basic shape of a stag elk, Tiberius has bonelike antlers that fan away from his head—flat and wide and sweeping back over his high shoulders. I’m not sure what they’re for or even what they’re really made of. The only metal in his body as far as I can tell is in his hooves. Even those are delicate and flexible, sharp or wide, depending on the surface. He is tall and proud and unafraid.

  After another week, I rode him. On his back, I can cover more distance. He moves quiet but fast and he doesn’t tire easily.

  “I’m coming, Gracie,” I transmit.

  Tiberius doesn’t flinch when I cling to him. My knees sink into the scavenged blankets that cover his wide back. Below them is a plasticlike hide that is tough and woven tight like wicker furniture. His underbelly is coated with hairy moss. I tighten my legs around him and twist my fingers into the confusion of brown and green fibers that sprout down the back of his neck.

  I love that his eyes are flat and black, like mine.

  Together, we make it westward across the Pennsylvania wilderness in a couple of weeks. Days pass with just the steady rattle of my backpacks thrown over Tiberius’s flanks and the sweep of shadows through tree canopy over our heads. The cool spring mist kisses my face and occasional patches of snow lurk in the shadowed places.

  With routine satellite sweeps, I minimize outside interference and stay in high-nutrition areas for Tiberius. He can eat almost anything, but definitely seems to prefer dry pieces of wood, especially hickory. With the raspy spinner in his mouth, he can eat siding off a house as easy as bark off a tree. I’ve seen both. My guess is that his biomass combustion works better on dry sticks and foliage. Tiberius eats green leaves only as a last resort and I could swear he doesn’t like the taste.

  Every day, Gracie’s communications are getting more desperate. Every day, I push Tiberius harder to reach her. Even now I can glimpse the orange haze of those evil thoughts, roiling on the horizon.

  Gracie sends me static-filled reports of twisted black walkers. My co-opted satellite eyes can’t see them, though. A burned cloud of encrypted communication is blocking everything. It’s a swirling, chaotic blind spot the size of a small city, and it’s moving steadily west toward Gracie’s compound.

  The closer I get, the louder the chaos is in my mind.

  When Tiberius finally slows and stops, we are a few kilometers from the former work camp where Gracie lives. We traveled all the way across Pennsylvania and now whatever-it-is lies just over this ridge. A frenzy of orange light strafes the sky. From this close, I’m able to track the individual communications. Tight-net broadcasts from antennae clusters mounted up high, far away to the east. The transmitters are on skyscrapers, in Manhattan, sending communications to a man out here named Felix Morales.

  Leader of the Tribe.

  Tiberius’s small head is turned sideways, his neck like a curved blade, one square black eye aimed at my face. His chewing mechanism is closed, the rotating belts inside his mouth locked into place and retracted under his chin.

  There is danger, he is thinking. A gossamer thread of silver-gray communication links our foreheads.

  I know, I respond. I’m sorry. Forward, please.

  I lean forward and wrap my arms around Tiberius’s neck, press my cheek against his warm hide. The interleaving plates of his skin bend against my face. He ducks his head forward, horns splaying out around us, and his shoulders flex and shimmer like snake skin. As the raspy plates slide over each other, they self-clean. Such a strange and elegant creature.

  “I’m coming, Gracie,” I transmit.

  As we crest the hill, I see a columnar battle formation. A staggered line of walkers, arraying itself with optimal spacing to swallow a potential ambush from the sides while maintaining maximum forward momentum. I have watched spider tanks and Gray Horse soldiers do the same dance dozens of times.

  But this time is different.

  I thought that all the nightmares had evaporated in the daylight after the New War. But now another bad dream has crept out of the darkness. This is a familiar army of walkers and soldiers, but every walker is a master and every soldier, a slave.

  In cached loops of satellite footage, I have seen herds of Rob quadrupeds migrating across the European countryside like lumbering elephants. Seen strange, shaggy robotic platforms the size of skyscrapers swaying on the open sea. I have witnes
sed Rob footprints bigger than these machines. But what they lack in size, they make up for in barbarity.

  A thousand filthy, half-starved soldiers are marching under the unblinking eyes of about a hundred machine overseers. Each slave driver has a body the size of a doghouse but strides on segmented legs as long as telephone poles.

  Eight legs instead of four. It’s no coincidence. From a three-foot mast sprouting on its back, each driver trails eight metal leashes. The cords are attached to collars wrapped around the necks of eight soldiers. The soldiers are barely clothed, much less armored. Each carries a rifle on a strap over his or her bony chest. The walkers slither over the rough terrain in lunging steps, soldiers scurrying along underneath. The whole crawling mass leaves behind an occasional broken corpse, trash from MREs, and abandoned supplies that were too heavy to carry.

  It’s a forced march.

  Tiberius and I stalk the army from a distance. Occasionally, I check the cooling bodies that I find in the army’s muddied trail, hoping for a survivor. But the slaves are always dead, necks broken by those strange leashes. The bodies are stripped of anything useful, including boots and pieces of clothing. I recognize half-familiar faces, haircuts, and tattoos. Some of these people are from the NYC Underground. These are the people I depended on for survival and who depended on me, forced now to fight for somebody they don’t even know.

  Tiberius and I skirt the snaking column. My stag claws through the thin woods, galloping in neat steps, leaf-dappled light playing over his horns. I learn not to let my feet touch his belly. The hide there has creased into long, narrow ridges that form a natural heat sink. With just the faintest communication between us, he homes in on Gracie’s last known geo-tag.

  Soon we are on the other side of a sickeningly familiar compound. It’s almost identical to the one that Nolan and I lived in so long ago. Low buildings behind a short chain-link fence. Surrounded by a wide, flat field of lush grass.

  And Gracie somewhere inside.

  In the sky over the compound, a waterfall of orange light is spilling down. Lines of command cascading in from the east. Shards of light that throb and waver as they move with the army that is massing on the perimeter of the work compound.

  “Mathilda . . . please . . . they’re here,” transmits Gracie.

  Distant black shapes creep over the field. Like clockwork, autoturrets spring from the turf and begin chattering in the language of gunfire. I hear strange thunking sounds as the walkers fire lazily tumbling canisters into the air. As they hit the ground thick gray fog begins to pour out.

  Now, I think to Tiberius.

  There is danger, repeats Tiberius.

  “Go!” I shout to the machine.

  And now we are flying over the field, small and fast. The turrets don’t orient for us, with bigger targets out front and the growing cloud of fog already obscuring their sensors. Tiberius leaps the chain-link fence and we land in a haze of gunpowder-smelling smoke. It billows around us, half swallowing the buildings and the fence.

  “Gracie?” I transmit.

  “Here,” comes the reply.

  Tiberius dives into the mist. We dart between shrouded buildings, closing in on the coordinates. After a few seconds, I spot Gracie and her mother crouched together in a wide ditch. It’s an open culvert that surrounds the compound, a trickle of water meandering along the bottom. Gracie’s mother has one hand curled around her daughter’s face, protecting her from seeing the carnage. The gentle, familiar pose sends a pang into me.

  There is danger.

  A shadow is rising behind us. The dirt erupts with ricocheted bullets and Tiberius spins and rears back. His horns are splayed out to confront a wiry black machine that picks through patches of mist and blue sky on long black legs.

  So many legs.

  I lose my balance and slide off Tiberius. Drop into the culvert, along with my blankets and backpacks and a haze of dirt off his wide back. The stag dives forward, head down. A clawed limb sweeps out. It crunches into the quadruped and sweeps him off his feet. He disappears from view, rolling.

  “Get over here, girl!” shouts Gracie’s mother. I feel hands pulling me.

  I’m on my back, staring up at a black walker. Eight legs, each tipped with a vicious claw, some swinging and others pushing into the grass. As it moves over the shallow ditch, its legs scissor in awkward directions and a handful of belly-mounted camera lenses glare down at me. The slave driver is standing twenty feet high, unstoppable, watching me.

  Five silhouettes crest the edge of the culvert. Slaves, each with a rifle. And now I see the red flicker of a targeting laser as it plays over the grass, racing toward us. Five weapons rise, barrels following the crimson dots. Cringing, I put my hands up.

  And a flash of light saturates my peripheral vision.

  It’s a human form, tall and terribly thin, made of pure intensity, barreling like a lightning bolt through the clearing. It drops a shining fist into the first silhouette and dances past the rest. The man’s head snaps back and he slips off the ridge and falls into the dirt. His collar catches his neck and his body hangs from the walker, unconscious.

  Bullets explode in the dirt around me.

  I’m on my butt, elbows digging into the ground. That cluster of black camera eyes still stares down, but some are orienting away. The slave driver is making a screeching sound, scanning for its attacker. Gracie and her mother and I scurry farther down the culvert, out from under the walker.

  Zzzzzzrack.

  The collar snaps off the dead man’s neck and retracts into the stubby mast with a snap like a bull whip. His body tumbles into the culvert. Now I understand what the extra legs are for. The thing braces itself on four legs and lets the other four rise like snakes, retractable claws flashing. It’s the last line of defense for a scavenging machine that borrows its fangs in the form of human fighters.

  “What the fuck is that!?” shouts someone.

  The slaves are taking firing stances to defend themselves. But the white thing is too fast. I see red targeting lasers chasing it, projected from the slave driver as this man made of light streaks across the clearing. Another slave drops to the ground, lifeless.

  Pop pop pop.

  Slaves fire wildly at the thing, mostly missing. And then the man-shaped streak of light is climbing the slave driver’s slender leg, hanging on tight as the walker tries to shake it off. Those serrated spines would slice open human flesh. But the white knight is not a person. It climbs nonstop, and the bullets are coming at it thick now.

  “Stop him,” shouts a man in a ball cap, and I hear real horror in his voice because he knows what’s going to happen. These slaves may not be fighting willingly, but they are fighting for their lives.

  Poppopopopopop.

  “Kill it! Kill it now!” comes a scream.

  The glowing white machine has reached the mast. Bullets ping off its casing or thump into the fabric armor it wears. The slave driver writhes and twists under the weight of its attacker. But the white knight holds strong to the mast with one hand, reaches down and grabs all the lines in one hand where they meet. Hand over hand, it yanks the four umbilical cords taut. Four throats constrict, and four weapons clatter to the dirt.

  Bodies swing. The bullets stop.

  The white knight is already ripping apart the camera cluster. Throwing unblinking black eyes down onto the ground. Methodically breaking them off like lobster claws. Sightless and lobotomized, the slave driver begins shutting itself down. It lowers its body to the ground. Pulls in those long wicked legs like a smashed spider. The knight steps off the wreckage, brushing shattered pieces of its own casing off onto the ground.

  I feel a gentle nudge against my neck. Turn to see Tiberius standing there, nosing me, a dent in his side but otherwise okay. I loop an arm around the stag’s shoulder.

  “Gracie,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  The little girl and her mother stare at me, mouths open, as I mount the stag.

  “Mathilda?” asks Gracie, the
white metal of her eyes bright in the wispy fog.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Climb on. We have to move.”

  But they don’t move. They just keep staring.

  A haze of brilliant light creeps into my peripheral vision. The knight is standing right behind me. I nudge the stag and he turns clockwise with neat, careful steps. Trying to squint and failing, I dial down the brightness of my vision. Finally, I see that the thing is a humanoid robot—a highly modified safety-and-pacification unit.

  It speaks in a low croak that is as familiar as the chill of sunset over my shoulders.

  “Mathilda,” it says, and the corpses and horror lying in a pile are lost in the streaks of light pulsating off its frame.

  A smile settles into the corners of my mouth. I can feel the cold metal of the ocular implant pushing against my cheeks. My lips part and I finally say his name out loud, instead of in my own head.

  “Nine Oh Two.”

  The Arbiter unit steps forward. A slender machine, perfectly proportioned for sprinting and field operations, standing at its full seven-foot height. It wears loose camouflage bindings around its arms and legs. A smashed plate of ceramic armor hangs over its chest, held in place by mesh wrappings torn with bullet gashes. A stubby antenna pokes up over its right shoulder. It orients a scarred, narrow head at me. Trains those three wide bullet-hole eyes on my face.

  From up here on Tiberius’s back, I am at eye level with the militarized robot. I know he was crafted according to U.S. milspec and he is artificial, but in my eyes he glows white like an angel. It is low-level residual radiation. Nine Oh Two has been marked by the time he spent at the bottom of that radioactive pit. He fought Archos R-14 alone and walked away with the scars to prove it.

  “I am sorry, Mathilda,” he says. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

  “I was doing fine, Niner,” I say. “But . . . thank you.”

  “Acknowledged,” he replies.

  “How did you get here?”