Chorong stood in front of a hole in the ground, surrounded by guards. The whirring of a giant motor echoed from the hole, presumably rotating blades located deep in the hole that would shred anything that came into contact with them. The guard who had been pushing Chorong around in the church still stood behind her, holding the taser next to her neck.

  “Usually, when we execute humans, we make them unconscious before we push them into the shredder. But you aren’t one. You don’t deserve it,” the guard whispered.

  She didn’t have any pain receptors anyway, but she kept that fact to herself.

  She looked into the hole, the doom. She took a deep breath.

  She felt a shove from behind, and she fell through the hole.

  Darkness consumed her. The light from the top of the hole quickly faded, and she couldn’t see anything. The fall continued longer than she expected. She could hear the horrifying loud motors’ whines becoming louder every millisecond. Instead of closing her eyes, she kept them open. She wanted to face her end.

  Did she have regrets? She would be lying if she answered no, but she did not think her life was meaningless. She hoped that James would remember her. She couldn’t help but feel a bit bittersweet when she remembered him. Still, she understood him and told herself that he had explicitly mentioned he would prioritize his own life. She wished the best for him and hoped he would be safe by now.

  For a split second, she thought she could see the blades of the shredders welcoming her.

  Then, a metal sheet flapped from the wall, covering the blades. Chorong fell on the flap, changing her direction as she fell into another rectangular hole on a side wall that she hadn’t seen. This hole was dug diagonally, making her slide on the bottom sheet like she was on a sled. She could see some light below her.

  The tunnel ended with a slope that changed from a downward diagonal to a flat angle. She was chucked out of the tunnel. She rolled on dirt until something soft cushioned her to a stop.

  Other than some tethered clothes, she hadn’t taken any damage from the fall. She pushed herself up from the ground and looked around. She seemed to be in a vast cave. Lightbulbs were installed along the walls, lighting up the area. A bunch of mattresses stood in front of her as if someone intentionally placed them there to catch whoever fell through the hole. Behind it was a bush of metal scraps to hold the mattresses in place. She spotted robotic limbs here and there in the bushes.

  Then, she heard footsteps. She turned around to face where the noise came from and got into a boxing stance.

  The footsteps got closer and closer. Then, a teenage girl emerged. Her black hair was tied in two ponytails, one on each side. Her long front hair came down her face and covered her left eye.

  “Hello, newcomer!” the girl greeted, smiling widely.

  “Hello,” Chorong replied warily. She had learned her lesson; she won’t trust any stranger blindly from now on.

  The girl put her hands on her waist and frowned, expressing anger. “Well, it’s not nice to greet someone in a fighting stance, you know.”

  Chorong scanned her surroundings. The only movement she detected near her was the girl in front of her, and the girl didn’t seem to have any weapons either. The only thing she found odd was that she could hear a very subtle buzz from the girl, as if she was emitting a low level of electricity.

  The robot dropped her guards. However, she still didn’t completely relax her arms just in case. The girl hopped to her and grabbed her hand. The hop made the girl’s long front hair bob to a side for a split second.

  A human could’ve missed it because it was such a short time, but Chorong saw it clearly; instead of a complete human face, underneath the long hair, the girl’s face was fractured like damaged glassware. Instead of biological human eyes, a robotic orb with a camera in the middle showed in the middle of the damaged gap.

  The girl was a robot. Chorong’s eyes widened with surprise.

  Still, Chorong could feel warmth from the girl’s hands holding onto her arm.

  “My name is Guide. I will show you around my city!” the girl said, dragging her to the direction the girl had come from. She wasn’t strong at all, but Chorong let her pull her. “It will also be your city, too!”

  Chorong frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Here it is: NOVA!” Guide exclaimed as they turned a corner.

  A town of low buildings made from metal scraps filled Chorong’s sights. There were lots and lots of people—no, not people, Chorong realized—robots. Some looked identical to humans, while others looked far from being biological. However, every single one of them acted like a human. They walked around the streets, they talked to each other, they stood in stalls and yelled to advertise their own products…It was just like an ordinary town, minus the fact that it was in an underground cave and humans were replaced by machines.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Before Chorong could ask anything, the girl pulled her into the busy streets.

  “Hello, Miss RB01!” the girl greeted as they went past a humanoid robot sitting on a chair. The robot waved at her in response.

  Chorong looked around in awe. This wasn’t something like a town; it was a town. Robots were inhabiting this town.

  “And this is my home!” Guide said when they arrived in front of a small house near the outskirts of the town. It had pipes as pillars and metal sheets for walls. There wasn’t any locking mechanism on the door, so they just walked in. Guide jumped on a big piece of metal block and sat on it as if it were her bed. She patted another metal block next to her, gesturing for Chorong to sit. Chorong did so.

  “So, I invited you to my place and told you a bit about myself, so I think it’s fair if you tell me about yourself too. How do you want to be called?” she asked.

  “Chorong. My name is Chorong.”

  “May I ask how you came here?”

  Chorong felt like something came up from her throat and clogged it. Something heavy pressed down on her chest. She put her feet in front of her bum and wrapped her arms around her knees, curling herself into a ball.

  “My friend had to say goodbye to me,” she said. She remembered being in the church, looking at James being pressed down to the floor. She recalled what he said clearly. His sentence echoed in her head slowly, word by word: I want my guitar.

  “I know he didn’t have a choice, but…” She tried to force out a smile, but only a sad one formed on her face. “I still can’t stop myself feeling a bit down.”

  Her mechanical voice echoed from the metal sheet walls, creating a noise which some humans might find irritating. She knew James never treated her differently from a human being, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he would’ve made a different choice if she was one…if she had a biological life.

  If so, she and James would’ve never gotten into problems with NURAT. Actually, she would have never had to leave William in the first place.

  “You seem like an intelligent robot,” Guide said. “Then this might work.”

  She put a hand over Chorong’s.

  “Pa once told me people feel better if they have physical contact with someone else,” she said.

  Chorong felt a bit of the heaviness in her chest fade away. The sadness in her smile subsided a bit.

  “It is working,” Chorong said.

  They stayed like that for a while. Chorong closed her eyes. She wanted to ingrain this memory into her memory forever. The house felt nicely warm. Another robot was holding her hand. She had never felt someone’s hand to be this comforting even though she had just met Guide.

  Then, an uncomfortable question formed in her consciousness.

  Was she feeling Guide to be comforting just because they were both robots? Just because they were both the same…species?

  She felt a bit sad. She was modelled to mimic humans. Then, did this mean grouping oneself with someone else just because they were of the same species or race was engraved into the human mindset?

  As if she saw Chorong’s thoughts, Guide slid down from her bed and stood up. “Come on, I will show you around more.”

  They went outside again. Guide guided her through the city’s parts where they hadn’t been yet. Chorong stopped by a few stores, examining goods sold in stores. They mainly were machine parts robots could install on their own bodies, such as motors and extra circuits. Some stores even sold ‘complete sets’; they each consisted of an entire limb, such as an arm or a leg

  She came across an advanced arm designed to mimic a human’s. It was so well-made that it would’ve been pretty horrifying for a human to see it being sold in a store if not for the wires poking out from its end.

  It reminded Chorong of the arm she had lost. They looked exactly the same. She even thought they were, in fact, the same models.

  She faced Guide. “What’s the currency here?”

  Guide shrugged. “There isn’t one.”

  Chorong frowned. She turned to the storeowner, a masculine android. His body—everything neck down—was very humanlike. He wore a worker’s apron over a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. However, his head was just a metallic cylinder with two cameras attached where his eyes would’ve been.

  The storeowner nodded. “She’s not lying. We don’t need one.”

  If he did have a human mouth, Chorong was sure he would’ve been smiling.

  “How?” she asked.

  “We are robots. Our goal isn’t to be rich; it’s to serve others. Everything is free. Whoever needs a thing takes it.”

  “This is a good arm. Why did no one ever take this?” Chorong questioned.

  “I assume robots who saw it probably thought it could be better used by someone else.”

  Chorong stared into the arm, shocked. She felt dizzy. She just couldn’t keep up with the mindset of the people in Nova. The warmth of these robots overwhelmed her.

  “We are robots. We were literally made to serve,” Guide said. “Our purpose is to serve others.”

  Chorong suddenly fell to her knees.

  “Chorong!?” Guide said. She kneeled next to her to examine her.

  Chorong breathed fast as her logical circuits overheated. She couldn’t think well as her mind fell into an infinite logic loop. She felt as if the world was spinning around her as questions tortured her mind. She was a robot—but she wasn’t like other robots.

  The reason these robots were selling the parts for free was because they cared more about the community and others rather than their own lives. In other words, they found no intrinsic value in their own lives. She remembered fighting the Alpha before meeting Secretto, fighting the Alpha at the prison. She was scared for her life. She remembered her own thoughts: I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. Such thoughts had made her hesitant when fighting, and it nearly made James die. In other words, she instinctively cared more about her own life than James’s during those split-second moments.

  She was just like a human. But she wasn’t one.

  She remembered what William had said. She will never be like his daughter. She wasn’t a human.

  She wasn’t a robot. She wasn’t a human. What was she?

  She looked at her hands. One was humanlike, and one was obviously a machine. Nonetheless, both shook violently.

  “What am I?” she murmured.

  A pair of arms came from behind and held her tight. It wasn’t Guide. A face dug into her hair from the back of her head.

  “You are my friend,” a familiar male voice whispered into her ear.