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  She returned her attention to the streets and watched the bordering skyscrapers suspiciously. Her gaze drifted to Horatio. She felt a strange kinship to the robot, more-so than Will. Perhaps because she felt more like the machine, than the man.

  “Horatio, do you have a human brain?” Rhea asked.

  The robot chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m all AI.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Horatio said. “You’ll find humans who’ve transferred their brains to robotic bodies like my own, because they can’t afford the more human-like synthetic bodies. But for the most part, if it looks like a robot, it’s probably housing an artificial intelligence.”

  She nodded. “That concept seems familiar to me.”

  “We’ll get your memory back yet,” Horatio said.

  “Don’t get her hopes up,” Will told the robot.

  She walked on in silence.

  Ahead, the road became blocked by the collapse of several buildings. Gizmo guided the party into a side street.

  Will, Horatio and Rhea marched between the two buildings, which were separated by a street containing four lanes and two wide sidewalks. The trio weaved between the debris of personal vehicles that littered the road. Most were land-based, with rotten wheels, but there were a few aerial craft among the lot, judging from the broken wings.

  She gazed at the hulking skyscrapers that bordered on either side, their shattered windows like hollowed out eye sockets. She wondered if anyone waited to waylay them inside those buildings, namely the bandits Will had spoken of earlier.

  “What happens if we’re attacked?” Rhea asked.

  Will shrugged. “Then we do all we can: take cover and fight back.”

  “That will be kind of hard, without a weapon,” she told him.

  “I don’t see how taking cover is hard,” Will said. “Duck behind one of the vehicles.”

  “I meant fighting back,” she said.

  He ignored the comment.

  She kept a wary eye on the bordering buildings and the alleyways between them but didn’t spot anything. She supposed Gizmo would alert them anyway if the drone picked up something.

  She glanced at Will. “How did you become a salvager?”

  “Sort of fell into the work,” Will said. “I was just a kid when half the world’s cities were destroyed. I was one of the lucky ones, living in a spared city. But I tell you, the crime and poverty that followed… man, wasn’t easy. My parents started salvaging to survive, and when I was older, I took over the business. I built Horatio from spare parts acquired over the years, and Gizmo, too. When you look at those two robots, and my backpack, you’re looking at all my worldly possessions.”

  “I’m not actually one of his possessions,” Horatio said. “You see, it’s illegal to own self-aware AIs. That’s tantamount to slavery.”

  “True that,” Will agreed. “Horatio follows me of his own free will.”

  “I wouldn’t quite say I follow him,” Horatio countered. “We’re partners. Will sold me a fifty percent ownership stake in Hoplite Industries. We split all the revenue we make in this business.”

  “Half the world was really destroyed?” Rhea said.

  Will nodded. “Yeah. We called it The Great Calming.”

  “A strange name,” she commented.

  “Dude, they were strange times,” he countered.

  “So, when you say half the world, you’re talking the north half, or the south half, or…”

  “It was random,” Will explained. “Spread across the globe. New York was razed, but Jersey City spared. Los Angeles bit the dust, while San Francisco remained untouched.”

  “What happened to the fallen cities?” Rhea asked.

  “No one really knows,” Will told her. “Most people blame Ganymede.”

  Rhea gave him an uncertain look. “Ganymede?”

  “Jupiter’s seventh closest moon,” Horatio explained.

  Will nodded. “We were at war with the Ganymedeans. Earth was running out of water, and we invaded Ganymede to get at the oceans stored beneath the frozen crust of the moon. The Ganymedeans didn’t like that and fought back with everything they had. One morning the people of Earth woke up to massive detonations: they weren’t nuclear, just conventional explosions, even so it was enough to utterly raze the cities in question. Billions died. Our population was reduced by half. That solved the water crisis, at least temporarily, buying us a few more centuries.

  “No one really knew where the explosions came from. There weren’t any missiles or other detectable forms of attack. That said, there are many theories… the most popular being that elite teams of Ganymedeans dispersed across the globe and planted charges in the weeks prior to The Great Calming. The theory is supported by videos shared on the streaming sites that depict Ganymedeans caught slinking into the different cities. Some people say those shots were staged or are simply convincing deepfakes. They support the next most popular theory, which is that Ganymedes had developed some sort of new, trans-dimensional weapon that allowed them to bridge space, teleporting the bombs directly into our cities. I guess we’ll never know.”

  Rhea sidestepped the fender that had fallen from a burnt-out vehicle next to her path. “Why not?”

  Will shook his head. “There’s nothing left of the Ganymedeans. In the aftermath of The Great Calming, the High Council stirred the people of Earth into a frenzy. Enrollment in the armed forces of the member countries went up tenfold, as did military spending. The industries of the world shifted as we switched to war economies, and we created machine monstrosities like nothing ever seen before. With our renewed army, we destroyed the Ganymedeans, all of them, to the last man, woman, and cyborg. You’d think we would have gained something from all that: access to the water supply we so direly sought. You’d hope. But that wasn’t the case. Because of the logistics involved in maintaining such a faraway base, we soon lost Ganymede to Europa.”

  “I’m surprised we’d give up, just like that,” Rhea said. “Considering the price we paid to acquire that moon. And I’m not just talking about the financial cost. We lost half of our population…”

  “I didn’t say that the winning was easy,” Will told her. “The last Ganymedeans put up quite the fight. Our army gave them a chance to surrender, but they refused. They said, and I quote, they ‘would rather die than fall beneath the yoke of the High Council.’ Anyway, we lost a good number of troops, not to mention expensive war machines and transport vessels. It wasn’t hard for Europa to push us back. Our leaders were tired of war by then, and a little sickened by what we’d become, I think. Since we already had a few more centuries of water left, courtesy of the steep population drop, the High Council decided a more diplomatic approach was in order.”

  “Something tells me that didn’t work out too well…” Rhea commented.

  Will smiled sadly. “Negotiations are still ongoing thirty years later.”

  “We’re there,” Horatio said.

  Rhea turned her attention away from the surrounding buildings and gazed directly forward. The road didn’t look any different up ahead—broken skyscrapers bordering a debris-filled street. She searched for Gizmo, but the drone was nowhere in sight: it must have taken a side street somewhere.

  That was when she spotted a lone sentry residing in profile next to a side road ahead. It stood with one shiny leg forward, the knee bent so as to step on the rubble pile in front of it. The golden robot held a large, body-sized pike at an angle in front of it, with the base braced against the ground. The glowing tip promised a particular nasty bite.

  The head turned to follow their approach.

  When they were about twenty meters away, the robot boomed in a deep voice: “State your business, Outlanders.”

  “We’re salvagers,” Will said. “Business license 520439-Omega-Gamma. We have salvage to sell.”

  “Hoplite Industries,” the sentry said. “You license is valid. Scanning your IDs.” It ran its gaze in tur
n across the three of them, the disks that served as eyes flashing as it met each of their faces. Rhea couldn’t help but flinch when those eyes flared across her own face.

  The sentry tensed, tilting the pike slightly toward its body. “The cyborg’s ID has no match. Explain.”

  “She’s newly registered,” Will said.

  Rhea received a pop-up notice on her HUD.

  Will wishes to add you to the private adhoc network Zandwich. Do you accept (Y/N)?

  She accepted. In the upper right of her HUD, three bars appeared, with the word Zandwich beside them.

  “All newly registered cyborgs are automatically added to the main database at the time of registration,” the sentry intoned. “Assuming it was done by an approved registrar.”

  “Apparently that step was missed…” Will said. “If you wish, we can leave her behind while we conduct our business in the settlement. It’s all the same to me if you want to babysit a new cyborg. I should warn you, though: this one likes to talk. A lot.”

  She heard Horatio’s voice in her head. You think he’s going to buy it?

  Of course, Will sent. Sentry robots like these, they hate talking.

  The sentry glanced at Rhea, and she had the distinct impression the robot was narrowing its eyes, though that wasn’t possible given their flat, disk-like nature. Finally: “That will not be necessary. I will insert the necessary records in the main database. Given name?”

  “Rhea,” Will said.

  “Surname?”

  “Doesn’t have one,” Will said. “She’s Arabic.”

  “Arabs have multiple surnames,” the sentry said.

  “Yeah, but not her tribe, dude,” Will said.

  The sentry cocked its head. “And which tribe is that?”

  “I can’t pronounce it,” Will said. “Shaheeyd wa’la man. I’m sending the spelling now.”

  That sounds made up, Horatio sent.

  The sentry hesitated, then: “Occupation?”

  “Salvager,” Will replied.

  A few more tense seconds ticked past. Perhaps that was the time needed to add the new records to the database the sentry spoke of.

  “Do you plan to enter Aradne?” the sentry asked.

  “No,” Will replied. “We have business only in Rust Town.”

  “You may proceed,” the sentry said.

  Will led the way, followed by Horatio and Rhea.

  The sentry’s head swiveled to follow them as they turned onto the side street. The robot seemed to give Rhea extra special scrutiny as she passed, but that was probably only her imagination.

  “Damn thing gives me the creeps,” she muttered.

  I was wondering when you’d figure out how to use the adhoc network, Will commented.

  She realized she hadn’t actually spoken the words aloud, but rather over their shared connection.

  How do I disconnect? she sent.

  Already sick of having us in your head? Will asked. There’s a mute button. If you concentrate on the network bars, a popup will appear showing those who are connected.

  She did that, and the popup indeed activated. She saw that she could mute Horatio and Will individually. She decided to keep them active for the time being.

  As she stepped onto the side road, she spotted Gizmo overhead. The drone hovered in place, waiting for them.

  Ahead, in the middle of the street, she could see several four-meter tall Texas barriers blocking all access forward. Beyond the concrete barriers, she saw slanted metal rooftops poking up. Past them, about a block away, awaited an even higher wall, this one more permanent: it was made of seamless metal, rather than interlocking concrete blocks, and wicked looking gun turrets poked out from the upper walkway at intervals.

  “What’s that?” Rhea said.

  Will followed her gaze to the gun turrets. “That would be Aradne, the capital city in these parts.”

  “But why the turrets?” she pressed.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said the Outlands can be a dangerous place,” Will said. “Sometimes, roving bands of highwaymen like to team up and stage coordinated assaults against the cities. Those turrets are designed not just to protect Aradne, but the Rust Town slums on its outskirts, too.”

  Rhea walked on in silence. The road here was clear of most debris and offered a relatively unimpeded path to the Texas barriers.

  “By the way, we’re in range of the settlement’s repeaters,” Horatio told Rhea. “You should be able to connect to the Net now. Try it.”

  “I’m not sure how…” Rhea began.

  But then she knew. She focused on the three bars in the upper right of her HUD, and a popup appeared showing other available networks. She connected to the one labeled Rust Town Local.

  A new popup appeared.

  You are now online. What would you like to do?

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’m in.”

  There were various options, such as sync a mail account, and search, but she would play with it later when she had a spare moment. For now, there was more than enough to occupy her attention in the real world, so she simply closed the popup.

  “Used to be, you could access the Net anywhere in the world,” Will said. “In the cities, the countryside, it didn’t matter. But then we gave up the countryside to the bioweapons, letting it become the Outlands. Most of the wireless towers out there were lost to the creatures—targeting network infrastructure and military bases was ingrained into their collective instincts by design. The remaining towers failed over the years due to lack of regular maintenance.

  “A network of satellites in orbit continued to offer wireless access to the Outlands for a while, at least until one of the rogue nations—some say it was Costa Rica—launched a cascade attack and fried most of them in a single fell swoop. Because the replacement cost was so high, and worldwide wireless access was no longer needed—most people never left the cities anymore—the High Council decided to forgo launching replacement satellites. And so, we’re back to relying on the old fiber infrastructure to link the major hubs, with wireless connections available only around the cities.”

  There was a gap in the barriers ahead—two of the Texas walls had been turned sideways, like open doors, allowing access to the settlement beyond. A pair of gold sentry robots stood on either side of the gap. A large, sealed bin resided on the asphalt next to the rightmost. The container was about half as tall as the barrier, and three times as long.

  The rightmost sentry robot beckoned toward the bin as Will approached.

  The salvager glanced at Rhea. “Guns aren’t allowed in most settlements.”

  A wide lid on the bin opened. Inside was a compartment containing a clear liquid. It was big enough to fit Will’s pistol, with room to spare.

  Will tossed the weapon into the liquid. Horatio came forward next and extended his arms; the rifle barrels underneath slid forward and popped out, splashing into the compartment.

  Horatio stepped back and the liquid promptly froze, completely encasing the weapons in a block of ice. The compartment whirred inward, carrying the block out of view. The lid also began to close. Before it sealed completely, Rhea caught sight of a new cavity rotating into place, this one filled with fresh liquid waiting to accept the weapons of the next visitors.

  The robots looked the three of them up and down, those metal disks that served as eyes flashing the whole time, no doubt scanning for further weapons. They concentrated on the packs that Rhea and Horatio carried on their backs. One of sentries also gazed skyward, where Gizmo was hovering overhead, then it jerked a thumb toward the gap.

  “Proceed,” the robot intoned.

  “Not yet,” Will said. “Not until we’ve acquired some certain hardware for our cyborg.” He glanced at Horatio.

  The robot nodded and entered the settlement.

  Rhea gave Will a questioning look, but when he made no move to follow Horatio, she asked quietly: “What’s going on?”

  “This won’t take long,” Will assured her. r />
  The robots kept those unnerving, disk eyes upon her and Will the whole time. Rhea did her best not to fidget beneath their gaze.

  Horatio emerged a few minutes later, carrying a small cloak folded over one arm. The robot offered it to Rhea.

  “Picked this up from the first clothing vendor I came across,” Horatio said.

  Rhea let the hooded cloak fall open and glanced at Will uncertainly.

  “Put it on,” he encouraged.

  She draped it over her head and shoulders and looked to Will once more.

  “Raise the hood,” he said, lifting it for her and letting it fall over her face.

  “There,” Will said. “With that hood, now nobody will know you’re a cyborg.”

  “Why does it matter?” Rhea said. “We’re in a civilized area now. There are laws here, aren’t there?”

  “Well, yes, but certain parts of Rust Town are even more lawless than the Outlands,” Will said. He nodded at the golden robots. “These sentries here, they don’t have much of a presence in the neighborhood we’re headed to. All I can say is, certain unsavory individuals might decide to do you harm if they see you. So keep the hood raised.”

  Will beckoned her to follow Horatio into the settlement, and he took up a position behind her.

  4

  Rhea gazed in wonder at the different buildings around her. Very few were taller than two meters, and most were lean-tos, with cargo containers scattered among them. Graffiti sometimes marred the exteriors. One in particular caught her eye, which read: it’s okay to be a cyborg.

  Children dressed in shabby clothes played in front of some of the structures; the doors were shut on most, but external security cameras monitored the perimeters, and rotated as she and the others passed each one. There was a distinct lack of windows.