Robogenesis Read online

  I’m part machine.

  “Leave us alone,” says Nolan. My little brother has moved in front of me, put his broad shoulders back, and lifted his face. The sun is cresting reddish-brown over the crown of his head. I can almost see the man he will someday be. It’s in the way his fists are clenched. In how he is scowling and trying to look fierce but shaking visibly.

  “She’s one of them, ain’t she?” asks the man, a snarl on his stubbled cheeks. “Rob got to her. Carved up her little face. She’s your sister, huh, little big man?”

  Nolan doesn’t respond. Takes a step backward into me as the dirty man steps forward. The man is reaching for something on his hip with his free hand in a well-practiced motion. It’s a flat black metal blade that shines in my vision, visible through the flexing tendons in his wiry forearm.

  A sheathed hunting knife.

  “Don’t be afraid. I just want to take a look.”

  The opaque metal of his gun looms in my vision. By the sight trajectory I’m guessing he’ll shoot Nolan first if we try to run, then me. Nolan gets it. He doesn’t resist as the man noses him out of the way with the gun muzzle and eases the greasy hunting knife out of its leather sheath. He holds the tawny striped handle lightly, like a scalpel, and lets the blade glint dark in my eyes. Slow, he raises it and presses the flat side of the blade under my chin. Lifts my face up.

  “Damn, kid. Rob did a number on you.”

  I stay perfectly still. The cool blade dimples into the skin of my throat. His rotten breath cascades over my face. The knife pulls away. Lifting it, he uses the crooked point of the blade to pick at the metal of my eyes. The tip of the knife makes a small scraping noise on me, like a dental pick. It slips off and bites into the skin of my forehead.

  I flinch away and the man chuckles.

  “Stop it,” says Nolan, putting a hand on the man’s elbow.

  Instantly, the man spins around and shoves Nolan back. Flicks the knife at his face, annoyed. To this man, it’s a movement as quick and natural as saying hello.

  The blade barely misses Nolan’s cheek.

  “No!” I shout, putting myself between them.

  Blade up, the man watches my little brother stumble back. Nolan puts a hand to his face, checking to see if he is cut. He is brave and silent in the face of violence, a veteran of it.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” says the man. “Lucky I didn’t shoot you both on sight. Most of the Tribe would have done. Christ. You and the rest of the subway rats are in for a rude awakening.”

  Watching Nolan warily, the man holsters his gun. His knife is still out and shining. My little brother doesn’t make a sound. He just watches the man intently. Waiting.

  “Look over there,” says the man, pointing toward the river with his knife. “Go on. You see? Look what you’re in for.”

  I look where he is pointing.

  In the distance, on the George Washington Bridge, I make out a rising heat signature. Temperature range is consistent with skin. People. Thousands of them. Crossing the bridge into Manhattan in force, some of them driving vehicles. Herding animals. Dragging loads of supplies. Coming back, and for good.

  “The Tribe is coming home. We been in the woods a long time, kiddos. Guy named Felix Morales came up from Mexico and saved all our asses. And he isn’t going to like you, little girl. Not with those peepers.”

  Above the people, an orange haze flickers. Rolling tides of amber light cascading down among the travelers in lines of communication. Evil thoughts and words from a nameless enemy. Not Archos R-14 this time. Something else.

  Maybe something much worse.

  “Now, I’m not gonna kill y’all for touching me,” says the man. He leans into me and peers at my face. Lifts the bloody knife. “But them things are worth something. So I am going to need to take those eyes.”

  Slow is smooth. And smooth is fast. I reach casually into my sling and grab hold of a small cylinder. I toss the broken plugger up in a neat arc toward the man. By reflex, he catches it in his free hand. Starts to toss it away and then stops, opens his palm. Frowns at me with a half smile on his face.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” he asks. “You think some old scavenge is—”

  But the sentence is cut off by spinal reflex as his arm jerks back. A short, surprised scream tears itself from his throat. The plugger awakes.

  Sending my thoughts out, I drop a gray ribbon of command into it.

  That corkscrew scream of a drill made in hell shrills as the device buries itself into the meaty palm of the man’s hand. He tries to shake it off but it’s headed rough and fast up the inside of his forearm. All the air comes out of his lungs in that first scream and after that the man keeps screaming soundlessly, his mouth open in an O shape, tendons stretching his neck and his face clouding red with the strain. The knife falls.

  His arm is jerking around like it’s on puppet strings.

  That plugger is damaged. It’s not moving clean toward the heart like they used to in battle. Instead, it tears through the meat of the man’s arm in grisly broken lurches.

  Nolan grabs me by the hand and pulls me away. Now we run together like we did when we were children. I have to warn Thomas and all the New York City Underground.

  The dirty man isn’t stupid. He has lived this long for a reason. Whoever the Tribe are, whatever they have done, they must be made up of survivors—the same as the rest of us.

  As Nolan and I crunch over leaves, vaulting between trees, I glance back. Through stripes of narrow pine, I see the filthy man sitting hunched over in the clearing, his back to us. Leaning awkwardly, he makes short, methodical movements with the knife. Stroke by stroke, silent and determined, he works at severing his own arm.

  2. MIGRATION

  Post New War: 2 Months, 6 Days

  After the battle at Ragnorak, when the Arbiter-class humanoid called Nine Oh Two fought and killed its own creator, thousands of other freeborn machines were left on their own. Oblivious to the emerging fate of his species, the Arbiter spent two months lingering in Alaska—guarding his squad mate Cormac Wallace as the man authored a book called The Hero Archive. During this time, freeborn robots around the world were coming to logical terms with their newfound existence. Likely due to his long-term exposure to human beings, the Arbiter Nine Oh Two proved less predictable than his brethren.

  —ARAYT SHAH

  DATABASE ID: NINE OH TWO

  17:49:01.

  Boot sequence reinitiated.

  Arbiter-class humanoid safety-and-pacification robot online. Milspec identification model number Nine Oh Two.

  Freeborn for approximately four months, seven days.

  Internal clock discrepancy. Awareness lapse: two minutes.

  Low-level diagnostics check. Severe physical trauma detected. Stress fatigue detected in upper thigh actuated spring mass. Suboptimal joint response times.

  Complex modifications active. Nonfactory standard sensors, actuators, and power source. Caution: Warranty void. Foster Dynamics corporation cannot be held liable for further actions of this unit. Please report any—

  Initiating visual body diagnostic. Engage active infrared vision. Unsuccessful.

  A few notes of a song drift into my black existence. Classify. Auditory hallucination. Determining origin of sound fragment as sampled from Awakening transmission. This is the song transmitted by a Japanese machine known only as Mikiko. She sent the coded instructions that awoke humanoid robots worldwide. She created the freeborn race.

  Save and flag for further reflection—it is the closest thing to a dream I’ve ever had.

  Human visible spectrum engage.

  Success. Adjust white balance and exposure. Confirm.

  Observation. I am not the first one to fall off this cliff.

  The face, half buried in the snow, belongs to a human male. Coat color and partial silhouette matches Gray Horse Army martial sample. Two silver poles, the legs of a shattered tall walker, stretch out behind his crumpled body. Flat and on its sid
e, the machine is sunk into the snow like a fossil. The human’s eyes are open, cloudy with frost. The body lies inside its own snow-filled impact crater. He fell from high.

  An observation thread registers zero residual body heat.

  It is an old kill. Left behind after the mass exodus from the Ragnorak Intelligence Fields. Men are returning to their homes now. To places warmer and flatter and more green than this waste. To places less lethal.

  It is very still here as my auxiliary systems finish booting. Wind sifts through snow-laden pine branches. The naked gray cliff behind me has stopped dribbling rocks. One last stone chatters down and tumbles past me into soft snow. My processor must have exceeded shock tolerance. Spun down. Based on the damage to my joints and torso, I can mark the path my body took over the precipice with high probability.

  The drop was hidden by a snowbank. I was moving too fast. Just like this dead soldier.

  His face is smooth and alabaster white. Once, he had the olive skin and black hair of a native Osage fighter from Gray Horse, Oklahoma. It reminds me of another face, Lark Iron Cloud’s, his mutilated body animated by perverse technology. My classification routines came back confused and I did not allow the soldier to see his superior, Cormac Wallace. I wonder now if that was a correct decision.

  What path did I set Lark on when I stood in his way that morning?

  Enhanced visual damage diagnostics. Peering down at the straight lines of my legs, I contemplate their machined perfection. Nature does not create straight lines. Only men do that. All around me are fractal spirals hidden in the patterns of leaves, the swirl of falling snow, and even the placement of debris on the ground. I have names for the patterns I see in nature: Normal distributions. Beta. Gamma. Poisson. Dirichlet.

  Diagnostic scan complete. Cleared for safe movement. Gross motor threads online.

  I rise to my feet and look down at the corpse one last time. The dead soldier’s lips are brittle and cracked. His hair moves stiffly in the wind, attached to a peeling scalp. The snarl on his face indicates that he died in extreme agony. Limbs shattered from the fall, the tall-walker machine that was his life support became his cage when he was impaled upon its struts.

  Pain.

  I send a minor thought thread to diagnose the odd grind in my left knee joint. It does not hurt, of course. Harsh wind rips at my casing and I do not feel its bite. Abrasions from my fall down the rock face mar my outer casing and I do not bleed. I’m alone in this natural world of rocks and trees and corpses. It is a strange feeling and I allow myself another second to experience it. I look again at the boy in the snow. Try to change my face to match his snarl.

  I wonder if I am becoming odd.

  Stepping around the corpse, I see the hump of the man’s shoulder. His jacket is torn, the marbled meat of his shoulder ripped open. Crimson blood is smeared onto the ice. Inconsistent with injuries from the fall. Maxprob indicates the boy in the snow has been partially eaten. Recently, and by something big. I pause to consider, put my face back to its normal impassive state.

  And then the thing hits me from behind.

  Kinetic energy transfer indicates a weight of around four hundred pounds. The impact throws me stumbling forward, head snapping back. My drives lock for safety and my mind skips a beat. I stagger forward and turn.

  The shaggy quadruped mammal that hit me roars and lowers its head. It raises its haunches, eyes low, bunching muscles to charge again. I stand still and cold as an ice statue. With the current damage to my frame it is unclear whether I can fight off this threat. Baring four-inch fangs, it appears capable of ripping through my exposed strutwork, disabling me physically and then leaving my aware corpse to rot in the snow.

  Well, not rot. Not exactly. My body was not made by nature and it will not return to nature anytime soon.

  It registers that I need help, which is uncommon. In my mind, I see a small dark face. She wears a crooked smile, her blank black eyes glinting. She is beautiful by human standards and by mine. Her name is Mathilda Perez.

  This juvenile human female once saved my life. When the sky was raining fire and my squad was dying around me, she guided me to victory. After it was over, and Archos R-14 burned and buried, she instructed me how to repair myself—helped me make new eyes. When satellite orbits allowed, we spoke in our own way.

  And then she was gone.

  “Mathilda,” I radio. “Can you assist?”

  I open my sensory input to her. The little girl can see what I see. She knows that my military samples don’t contain wildlife—certainly not North American wildlife. My original mission was to patrol dusty streets of occupied war zones in the Middle East. My mission was interrupted by the end of the world. Now I am very far from fulfilling the operational guidelines I was designed for.

  Everyone is, these days.

  “Repeat. Urgent request—”

  It’s a grizzly bear. I hear her voice in my head. A strange feeling settles over me. I am glad to hear her voice. I missed her over the last weeks. Missed the curious mind of this little girl who is still a decade older than me.

  A burst of naturalist information hits my database over the radio, relayed via the local satellites that the girl seems to be able to hack by second nature. I learn about a variety of bear species. Other megafauna that live in this region. Temperature norms and topographical maps. A torrent of useful survival information.

  It’s not a threat to you. End transmission.

  Ursus arctos horribilis. A big male. A species of solitary omnivores whose territory can range up to four hundred miles. Not aggressive to humanoids except in defense of its young. Or in defense of a kill.

  I glance at the bloodied, partially eaten corpse.

  The bear shakes its head and growls, almost plaintive. The creature is fat and healthy and loaded with muscle that ripples under windblown fur. Long yellow fangs flash at me under an expressive, quivering muzzle. That growl drops octaves until it dips below my frequency range and becomes only a vibration in the ground detected by my seismic sensors.

  “Mathilda?” I transmit.

  Nothing. She is gone. The grizzly bear advances a step, a steady growl rumbling deep within its chest, small brown eyes aimed up through two patches of black fur around its eye sockets.

  “Request assistance,” I radio. “Proper evasion response.”

  I can’t keep doing this, Niner. It’s weird, okay? The war is over and you’re going to have to survive on your own.

  “Urgent,” I repeat.

  Look at its eyes. It isn’t after you.

  Mathilda is right. The bear is looking over my shoulder. My max-prob was based on incomplete behavioral information. That whining growl sounds again from deep inside the bear’s chest. This bear is not exhibiting aggression.

  This bear is exhibiting a fear response.

  The war is over. I need my life to go back to normal. You have to find your own kind, Niner. Leave me alone. I’m sorry.

  Something crashes in the woods behind me. Something big. Frequency of impacts indicate footsteps. Probable stride length over four meters. Speed approximately eight meters per second through dense, uneven terrain. A rogue walker.

  I turn my head in time to see it peek over the crest of the rock face. The hull plate thrusts out, silhouetted against gray skies, forelimbs pawing the air before the bulk of it plunges down the cliff. The modified quadruped tank falls in an avalanche of plated armor and synthetic muscle.

  Vehicle identified: Gray Horse Army spider tank model. Heavily modified. Its round intention light glows a hostile yellow as it slides toward me. Afterburner bright, it saturates my image sensors and blooms into a hazy bonfire that darkens the background to nothing. The color reminds me of the churning orange haze that I have seen floating over the horizon. The color of rabid thoughts.

  Low-level reaction diagnostics kick in and my legs actuate. Inertial sensors saturate with G-force as my body launches out of the way. I hit the ground and roll. The spider tank stumbles past, hurd
ling over the grizzly bear. The bear whimpers and cringes, not even taking a token swipe at the gargantuan machine.

  Something is wrong with the spider tank. It has no human riders or squad mates. A dog without its fleas, as the soldiers would say. Its belly net has been sliced open, a few pieces of rope flapping like flayed skin. All the supplies are gone. Twenty yards away, it collapses pathetically onto its knees. Finally stabilizes on the icy rock and goes still. Slowly, it flexes muscled legs and stands up.

  Searching.

  I lie perfectly still where I have fallen. The grizzly bear is also playing dead. The bulk and dexterity of the spider tank have activated some kind of unspoken survival instinct that we have in common, even though we are both used to being apex predators.

  In the fading sunlight, a spotlight activates on the stocky turret of the spider tank. It slowly turns, sweeping illumination across rows of trees like black fingers. Seeing something, it stops. Some coded communication takes place. A query.

  No response.

  The tank begins to walk away, its spotlight flowing over the ground. Deeper into the trees, it starts to jog. Finally, the spider tank breaks into a wheezing trot. It quickly builds up a solid dense momentum that sends it crashing through the narrow gaps between trees. A lurching beacon, its light fades into the cold empty waste.

  All is silent and still under the shroud of frigid dusk. I detect movement a meter away. A dark mound of fur is rising up from the snow. A quarter ton of lean, winter-tested muscle and fang. Clouds of hot breath erupt from its lungs every second. Those two black patches of fur around its eyes lower and level on me again where I lie on my back in the snow. Moving smoothly, both of us killers, we reach a crouch at the same time. My three eyes trained on its two.

  Then, at the same instant, we both back away. Seconds later, we bolt in different directions. Something is hunting these woods tonight. Something foreign to the bear and to me. Neither of us wants to have anything to do with it.