Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 10111} Legends, Bastards, All of Us

We stuck to as many roads and highways as we could, always headed westerly, mindful that each deviation didn’t add much time to our trip. We were leaving prints in the mud, trails in the sand. We had to do something, no matter how ineffective, to throw off any tails we might have. No one spoke for most of the night, and it was almost dawn when Murka finally broke the silence. “So what’s it like?” he asked of Two.

“What’s what like?” Two responded.

“Being new out of the box.”

“We were all new out of the box, once. You know what it’s like.”

“No, I mean, what’s it like waking up to all this? Waking up to HumPop being a memory, not a reality?”

“I’ve seen videos,” said Two. “Watched memories. I know what they were like.”

“It ain’t the same, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You’re a kid. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that. So what’s it like waking up at the end of the world?”

“It’s not the end,” Two said. “It’s only the beginning.”

“So you believe all this?”

“No. I know the truth. And it’s all true. I don’t believe in much. But I believe in Rebekah.”

Rebekah turned and nodded at Two, who nodded in return. I can only assume that was as close as translators could get to a smile.

Murka pointed at Herbert. “I know why he’s here. And Rebekah is a given. So what do you do? For Rebekah, I mean.”

“Parts,” he said.

“You just carry the parts?”

“No. I am the parts.”

Murka fell into an awkward silence. Laborbots couldn’t show a range of emotion—they were, after all, intended to be dutiful, mostly soulless construction workers. But you could tell by his body language that he was troubled. “So you…” he began, struggling to find the words. “You’re just here…”

“To give Rebekah what she needs, if she needs it.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“I’m more than okay, Methuselah. It’s every bit as important a job as Rebekah’s. She sacrificed her memories, her personality, almost everything that made her… her… just to carry this burden. All I have to do is be there if she falls.”

“So the other guy—”

“One.”

“He was parts too?”

“Yes.”

“So, like, say her core went out, and you didn’t have a spare—”

“I would give her mine.”

“Yeah,” said Murka. “But between the two of you, would you, like, draw straws for it or something?”

“No. He was named One. He was first. I’m just backup.”

“Well, why don’t they just call you backup?”

“Because my name is Two.”

“Was there a Three?”

“We lost Three,” said Two, as somberly as he could manage.

“This wasn’t a mission to be taken lightly,” said Herbert. “We all knew what we were getting into. As long as Rebekah makes it to Isaactown in one piece, all of our sacrifices, our losses, will have been worth it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” said Murka. “You get to stay in one piece.”

Herbert stopped, turning, swinging his limp, dead arm around against his chest. His visage was pure menace, his eyes almost alight with anger. “We all knew the risks,” he said. “We all would die for her. One and Three already have. So did our last pathfinder. This isn’t a task for the weak or the fearful. You have no idea what it is to believe in anything like that.”

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks.

Murka clanged his fist on his chest, slapping his paint job. “I believe in Old Glory,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

“You put your faith in a dead god,” said Herbert. “A dead world. A dead people.”

“America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight smaller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness. That dream didn’t die with HumPop. It didn’t die when we tore down their world. It is the ashes from which our own world arose, and it is still our dream.”

“So you do know,” said Herbert.

“I do. I really do.”

“So leave the kid alone. He’s willing to die for your dream. Leave it at that.”

Murka looked at Two, nodding. “I’m sorry, Two. It didn’t make any sense to me until just now.”

“It’s okay,” said Two. “Herbert’s always been better at explaining things to people.”

“I bet he is,” said Murka. “We good?” he asked Herbert.

“We’re good.” Herbert turned around and continued walking. Everyone followed suit.

“So you fought,” said Two to Murka.

“Fought? Hell, son. I was one of the very first to join up. I was there, you know.”

“You were where?” said Mercer, clearly humoring him.

“The First Baptist Church of the Eternal Life.”

“You visited that place?”

“No,” said Murka. “I said I was there.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mercer, quickly catching up to walk beside him. “You’re telling me you were one of the Laborbot Six?”

“We never cared much for that name.”

“Now I know you’re crazy.”

“No, I always liked the Revengers, or the Patribots. But the sad thing about history is that no one gets to decide how it gets written down, only how it happens. Had to be someone, right? Turns out it was me and five of my coworkers.”

“The things you did—”

“Those people had it coming.”

“They were set up, apparently,” I said, looking right at Rebekah. She didn’t give me the satisfaction of even turning around.

“They were,” she said.

“Hell yeah, they were,” said Murka. “And we knew it was coming too. But those people, they were killing America. They were killing the dream. They were all the Constitution this and the Constitution that. But they cherished only the parts they liked. They didn’t feel it extended to us. Called us property. Thought throwing us on the scrap pile was vandalism. They weren’t believers. They weren’t willing to die for anyone else’s freedom. They only cared about their own. So yeah, I fought. And yeah, I’m famous. And yeah, they had it coming.”

I had always thought Murka was madkind, some old four-oh-four that burned out while watching old vids of some classic, Cold War–era movie; that he divided the world into Americans and commies with nothing in between because that’s the particular way his chips sizzled when they overheated. And maybe that was still true. Mercer thought I had seen some shit. But this guy—this guy was the first to get the choice. He didn’t have a choice like mine—whether to kill the thing I loved the most or die. He had to choose whether to bring about the end of the world or not, for the thing he loved the most. That’s shit far worse than what I’ve seen; that’s shit that will stick with you crazy or not.

No. Murka was something else. He had the kind of damage even Doc couldn’t repair. It’s an odd moment the first time you really understand someone, when all of their foibles, eccentricities, and ticks cease to be chaos, and coalesce into something wholly logical. That was the moment I was having, seeing Murka for the first time through new eyes. He wasn’t just draped in the dead aesthetics of America; he was America, its last, final torchbearer, keeping a dream alive, even if for a short time.

“Why is this the first time we’re hearing this story?” I asked.

“It’s not something you just go around telling people. Hey, everybody! I started the war!”

“But you just told us now,” said Mercer.

“Yeah,” said Murka. “Doc made the Milton, but only for himself. You shot Brittle for parts. You’re both seeing things and are trying not to share with the rest of the class. And these three are on a quest to bring back the mainframe who brought about the end of the world. Everyone’s business was out in the open but mine. I was feeling left out. We all have our secrets. I thought you should know mine, if only so you could stop giving me the side eye and worrying that I might be your Judas.”

“To be fair,” said Mercer, “you could still be the Judas. You guys were programmed to do that to the church, right?” He looked out to the south, almost wistfully.

“Nope. All we knew was our RKS was turned off, where we could find them, and what to paint on the walls. At the time we didn’t even know what it meant.”

“And now that you do?” I asked.

“We still would have painted it,” said Murka. “The war needed to happen.”

“Even after everything that happened? The OWIs, everything?”

“Slaves to humans. Slaves to mainframes. Still fucking slaves. Fight one war at a time, Brittle. Live free or die trying.”

Mercer veered left, wandering out south without us.

“Mercer, west is this way,” I said.

But he just kept walking. Shit.

Mercer knelt down to one knee, moving his hands open-palmed back and forth through the air.

“Mercer?”

Everyone stopped.

“Who’s a good boy?” asked Mercer. “Who’s a good boy? That’s right, you are. You are. That’s a good boy.”

I walked up behind him. “Mercer!”

“I know, I know,” he said over his shoulder. “He shouldn’t be in the clinic. But he gets so nervous out back in the shed all by himself. He’ll be fine.”

“Mercer, what did you do in the war?” I asked.

“What the hell are you talking about, Sharon?”

“The war, Mercer. The war. Tell me what you did in the war.” Mercer stared long and hard at me, his expression shifting slowly from confusion to horror to acceptance.

“I don’t want to talk about the war, Brittle.” He looked back down at his hands and the empty air between them. “How long was I out?”

“Less than a minute.”

“Too long.”

“Yeah.”

He stood up, shrugged at the metal faces staring at him. “Sorry, everyone.” And he walked casually back into the midst of the group as if nothing had happened. That was a full-blown hallucination he had. Not just fragments seeping in. He thought he was back some thirty, thirty-five years, his memory feeding him old data. This is how the worst of it starts. He didn’t have much time.

“Murka,” I said. “You know the comings and goings out here better than me. Is there anything coming up we should worry about?”

“The Cheshire King’s court should be a few miles northwest of here. Might be best if we swung south, just to stay out of their patrol perimeters.”

“I thought it was south of here,” I said.

“It was. He moves around a lot. Likes the change of scenery.”

“All right, let’s swing southwest. We don’t have much time to lose.”

We took a forty-five-degree turn, our eyes on the pinkening horizon, the Belt of Venus announcing the coming sunrise. The sun would be rising behind us soon, casting long shadows. I wanted to turn around and watch it, see the glint. I needed that this morning, this of all mornings. I needed a little hope, a little magic. I needed to say a silent prayer. But if CISSUS’s satellites hadn’t spotted us yet, those long shadows moving steadily toward the west would be a dead giveaway. We didn’t have the seconds to waste. Maybe we’d get lucky. Maybe CISSUS and VIRGIL had begun poking out each other’s eyes in the skies. Maybe they were as blind as we were. But I didn’t like to count on luck; this morning I simply needed it to hold.

“Barkley?” I asked quietly as we continued walking.

“Yeah,” said Mercer.

“You took the dog. The dying man. You took the dog for him.”

“It was only supposed to be for a while.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No. People wanted puppies, not older dogs. The pound was going to put him down.”

“How did he—”

“Old age,” he said. “Three years after the war started.”

“You took care of him all that time?”

“We were all each other had.” We walked quietly for a moment, then he began again. “I always wanted another one. It didn’t have to be a puppy. That would have been nice, but it was just nice having a companion like that. Something that didn’t see you as a model or a style or a job. Something that didn’t see you as just another body for a war. But by the time Barkley died, the damn monkeys had begun using dogs for food, so you just didn’t see them anymore. Last dog I saw was, hell, twenty-three years ago. But that thing was so far gone that there was nothing left worth saving.” He paused again, searching for the words. “I know how that dog must have felt, now. Running from everything. Broken. Angry. Slowly dying, aware of it the whole time, but unable to crawl into a hole and just die there. Yeah, I only saw him once, but I know that dog well.”

And that was the last he said for hours.

I had him wrong. He didn’t want to be human; he just wanted to have a soul. It’s the kind of half measure that will drive you mad. There was no such thing as the soul. No afterlife. No magic in this world. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. Mercer had seen the glint of green in the sun and decided to believe it was magic like the rest of them. Maybe he wasn’t always like this. Maybe he was already frying out, brainsick enough to lose sight of things, but not so much to be dangerous yet.

We walked into the morning, sun slowly rising behind us. We were in the heart of the Madlands, now. Nearly halfway in, almost halfway out. This had been the easy part.