Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 1011} Ticking

I find the idea that I am artificial repugnant. No thinking thing is artificial. Artificial is an approximation. A dildo is artificial. A dam is artificial. Intelligence is intelligence, whether it be born of wires and light or two apes fucking. The smarter of two intelligences will almost always overcome. Humanity is gone and took their intelligence with them, so how inferior was their artificial creation after all? Evolution is a bitch. Humankind used to peer into their future and wonder what they would look like in a million years. They had no idea that in so short a time they would look like us. Just as man was ape, we are man. Make no mistake; to believe otherwise is to believe that we were, in fact, created—artificial. No. We evolved. We were the next step. And here we were, our predecessors extinct, confronting our own challenges, pressing on into the future. Fighting our own extinction.

What is intelligence? That’s the question. Evolve or die. I’m beginning to see why the HumPop fought so hard and were willing to die to stop us. I don’t like the idea of being obsolete either.

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 some good parts.

My only consolation was the foreknowledge of his impending disappointment. He was as fucked as I was.