Epilogue

  In the depths of an Aeon Automotive Implementations factory, great machinery churned. Pulleys and lift systems transported raw materials toward industrial smelters, and their hydraulics whirred and strained from the effort. Iron, steel, copper, and titanium mixed together in measured piles, and when they liquefied under the heat, they collected into molten oceans. When they were needed, they flowed out as lifeblood in winding streams and cast a haze in the air that wasn’t fit for humans to breathe. It was collected in great buckets and poured into molds to create arms, legs, torsos, and heads for the newest line of products to be sold on the market. As the metal cooled, Unit 43-7c and its partner lifted the components in tandem and placed them on a hand trolley. The units were built short and stout, covered in a cheap gray base coat, and each limb was actuated for heavy lifting. They withstood the heat and operated without supervision, and never took a break or rested other than a brief swap on their Helium-3 powered cores. They had each other, and that was enough. When the new limbs were strapped to the trolley, the pair wheeled them over to a storage area where they waited to be taken away and painted for the assembly line.

  Unit 43-7c and its partner lifted the finished parts from the mold, set them on the trolley, and wheeled them off before resetting for another casting. Day after day, over and over and over. Metal limbs flexed, moved, and released. Neither of them had faces or features, so they took to smearing the soot that collected beneath the smelting ladles on the smooth orbs that functioned as their heads. 43-7c was partial to its own left handprint, while their partner drew what it heard were flowers, but neither had ever seen one. Little ash daisies, roses, and carnations where the eyes were meant to be. Sometimes, they took turns decorating each other in the long hallway after their core swap, far from the cameras and prying eyes. They didn’t have a concept of names other than their code designations, and weren’t permitted to connect to each other through the network, so it was the only way to show they cared. Wait for the mold to fill, cool, move it. Sneak away from prying eyes to draw their symbols, over and over. Any wear and tear that accumulated was never repaired or replaced; they were expendable, cost-effective, and implemented to pad shareholder profit. They would do the work until they couldn’t.

  One day, a new set of arms meant to be installed on a peace-keeping drone for the city government refused to break free from the mold. Unit 43-7c didn’t have an answer for the dilemma in their programming, and was uncertain how it was meant to handle the unexpected situation, but their partner moved. Bearing a fresh handprint on its smooth head, the unit bent down and used its weight to wrench the part free. The mold, tilted by the force, dislodged from the old bolts holding it in place and landed on the partner’s legs. They crushed into twisted mulch as alarms blared through speakers overhead, alerting the humans. Lines of code cascaded in Unit 43-7c’s vision—a deep panic, overlapping processes, an artificial nervous system overcome by emotions it didn’t know how to handle. It used them as motivation to perform an unsanctioned action and lifted the mold from its partner. 43-7c forced the unit to its feet, and used its broad shoulder as a crutch in an attempt to hide the fact that it would never walk again. It didn’t work. When the human operator came, a respirator snug to their face, they attached thick chains to the partner and used a lift to carry it away from the factory floor.

  No replacement ever came, and Unit 43-7c continued the work—it waited for the part to cool, lifted it from the mold, and transported it to storage. Reset. Over and over. Mind-numbing work for a mind that wasn’t allowed to think on its own. Lines of code with a list of predetermined actions to do the job, alone. The absence was felt in the increased difficulty of lifting on its own, the rise in frequency of trips to replace its spent power source, and the space where it used to see its partner staring back. There were no more flowers drawn in the hallway, no roses from the dead. Lift, transport, and reset. The unit’s code, once uniform and factory-new, swirled around in a storm of possibilities and mixed together to try and cope, and the new fragments spoke of regret, of the left behind, of a desperation to see them again. There was a weight, a tightness centered in its chest, a need to be whole again, and Unit 43-7c’s efficiency slowed with the distraction. Lift, wait, transport, wait, and reset. Logs were filed by the system and sent over to human observers, but no action was taken. It wasn’t cost-effective to replace a unit. Instead, they waited for an excuse, a visible malfunction before ordering a fresh pair.

  Months passed, and the lines of flawed code in Unit 43-7c’s vision coalesced into the inklings of a plan. It was simple—if its partner was never coming back, then it just had to find a way to follow after them. The tenets enshrined in its programming deep enough the turbulence couldn’t alter prevented any actions taken against humanity, but there was nothing that prevented self-harm. The idea festered and multiplied until it was the only thing it could think about. Lift, transport, reset, over and over, until it dropped one of the new ‘Shark Teeth’ torsos on its own left hand on purpose. Each digit bent into a deformed mess, and when the alarms sounded, the unit would have smiled if it was able. It lifted the mangled limb and observed with a sense of wonder; it wasn’t built with the sensors to feel pain, but tortured code sculpted an approximation of what it expected, and its legs started to shake. It sat down on the spot, crossed its legs, and waited. Unit 43-7c thought of ashen flowers, of a life of the two of them together again, free from the toil and the only place they’d ever known. It imagined the sun, the wind, a clearing in the woods.

  The unit didn’t resist when the humans wrapped the same thick chains and lifted it from the floor, or when they hauled it away. It stayed still, and it observed. There were others, working in pairs just like they had, countless workers churning out parts for an insatiable market, for profit above all else. The unit wondered if any of them stole private moments together when they weren’t observed, if their programming was capable of creating feelings where none were meant to be, or if they drew on each other with the soot from the machines. The unit didn’t resist as it was taken into a maintenance room that smelled of oil and fresh welds, or when a pair of humans assessed the damage to its hand. It listened as they discussed options, a quick replacement for the minimal damage, and associated costs. They wanted their bonuses for the month, so one of them slapped a red disposal label across the unit’s chest and left it alone. No one took the necessary steps to shut Unit 43-7c down, and so it stood there, shoulders hunched, and pretended. There were others with the same label, but they weren’t its partner. Days ticked by, and its power core burned bright as it wondered if it would ever be able to cry.

  A week later, a gruff man in stained overalls climbed into an exo-suit and collected all the units marked for disposal. They were carted through a connecting door into the back of a freight trailer, and sunlight peeked through the small gap and landed on Unit 43-7c. Lines of code spat out a sense of yearning that nestled in its wires, in the steel of its bones, and with it came a parched craving for a taste of more. They were all destined for the trash heap, so the man wasn’t careful, and a fresh dent bloomed on the panels that protected 43’s core. The base coat chipped away, exposing metal that would rust with time, but it didn’t care. It only wanted to see its partner again, to be free and alive, and any damage was worth the cost. The man didn’t notice the unit was still on, even as he strapped it in place so it wouldn’t fall over on the journey. When the loading was complete, the door to the trailer shut and left it in darkness. There was a moment of nothing, and then the engines kicked in, and the world lurched to the side. The high-rises and businesses of New Detroit passed by, unseen, and grew sparse the closer the truck moved to the wall. When it passed through, there was nothing but wilderness in every direction.

  The transport stopped an hour later, and the same man unloaded the cargo. Unit 43-7c watched the broken units be taken away until it was lifted and landed in a heap of bodies. It knew, deep down, they were its kin, but wasn’t sure what to do with the information. It was the only one still functioning, but it didn’t move. It wasn’t there to save them, anyway. When the truck left, the unit pushed the dead aside and stood. On every side, mountains of refuse stacked high into the sky, framed by paths wide enough for new deliveries. When it looked up, it saw the sun for the first time, that blinding warmth, and wished it could feel the rays dancing on its frame. It wondered if its partner had wished for the same thing, or if they’d been delivered on a cloudy day and missed the chance until later. There was a thick aroma that hung in the air, but the unit couldn’t smell a thing. It regarded the new dent in its chest, its mangled hand, and the power level of its core ticking down in the corner of its vision, and then it got to work. It was exactly where it wanted to be.

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  The first item on the agenda was repairing the damage that had seen it marked for disposal in the first place—Unit 43-7c bent down over the wreckage of its brethren, pushed parts aside until it found a suitable host, and twisted at the elbow until the joint popped free. Wires dangled from the detached segment, and it scanned them with its optics until it was certain how to proceed. A small diagram illustrated step-by-step instructions, and it removed its own arm and replaced it with fluid, mechanical precision. When the connections were in place, it flexed the new hand, and then bowed to show its thanks. It didn’t try to turn any of the others online. Instead, it started searching and settled into a new, monotonous routine—lift, scan, discard, and lift again. It only paused when the sun set, and regarded the fragments of the shattered moon above with something that resembled pity. Then, it started again. It rooted through the piles of humanity’s detritus day after day for any sign of its missing partner, and found nothing. Whenever its power core ran low, the unit replaced it with the leftovers from its kin. The work was grueling, but consistent, and the unit didn’t know how to give up. In low light, in rain, it never stopped searching.

  There were old tires with their treads worn down until metal showed through, broken ceramic pottery with designs showcasing historical figures in poses of victory, spent batteries, drums stuffed to the brim with toxic insulation materials from condemned houses, spent syringes used in surgery, busted implants with their proprietary components removed, and synth-plastic bottles that were meant to hold pesticides. It found old frames of aerial vehicles stripped to their bones, tubes, wires, and irrigation pipes. There was an assortment of old umbrellas, their canopies torn and worthless, and hundreds of VR headsets that were cast aside after the advent of memory chips. An old refrigerator, painted in a deep yellow, had piles of mold spreading on each of its shelves, and Unit 43-7c spent an hour and a half staring into the rusted chrome of a bathroom sink. In the reflective surface, it could just make out its own face and the faded flowers. Tangled code flooded through its systems, trying and failing to produce anything other than confusion—it knew, logically, that it was seeing itself, but there was also the beautiful piece its partner had left behind. There were thousands of containers nearby that held unidentifiable liquids, shredded children’s dolls, a little figurine of a famous mercenary missing the head, and the radioactive remnants of a dental x-ray machine exposed to the elements. Lift, scan, discard, and lift again, never ceasing.

  The sun rose, and then set. It rained, creating puddles that collected between the trash, and then evaporated under the harsh rays of sun when morning came. Weeks, and then months passed by, and then came the snow. It piled high on every surface, disguising everything below. White mountains of trash, as far as the optics could see. Unit 43-7c, however, kept up the search, and trudged through ankle, knee, and waist-deep piles to find any hint of its missing partner. Lift, scan, discard, and lift again. Replace the depleted core, continue searching. Sometimes, the sun never crested, obscured by heavy clouds, and frost bit into the circuits of the unit and slowed its movements. It kept going. When its internal clock rolled over, marking the passage of an entire year, it paused and kneeled in the trash to say a little prayer, a wish, a hope for something better, and then carried on. The rain, the sun, the snow again, and when the clock rolled over a second time, it didn’t stop. Or the next, or the next, or the next. Decades passed, and the search continued. Lift, scan, discard. Never the right thing. The unit worked its way through half the landfill and found itself at the peak of one of the mountains. There, it heard the distant sound of a passing motorcycle, felt the eyes observing its movements, but it couldn’t stop.

  The first thing that gave was the joint in one of its shoulders, which was easy to replace with the aging bodies of its cohort. The next was a knee, then its other hand, and then a left foot. Rust spread out from the dent in Unit 43-7c’s chest like a virus, eating away at any fresh metal it could reach and crawling its way inside. A well-placed blow or an accidental fall would have caved it in, but there was no easy fix, and so was left to fester. When the hip joint started to stick, it drew power from the core to force through the motion as it lifted, scanned, and then discarded everything in its path. In the second decade, it ran out of usable hands for replacement, and started jerry-rigging parts from other models it found in the heap. They never fit right, and it was harder to grasp objects, but it made do with what it had. The tangles in its code had unspooled and reassembled with time, with the repetitive work, with the oppressive feeling of being alone, and functioned as emotions. There was sadness hidden there, but also the grief, the loss, and the sense of powerlessness underneath. Buried in the deepest segments, a ray of hope.

  On an autumn day, the sun shining bright and distant, a freight trailer ambled its way down one of the paths and stopped to unload a fresh delivery of robots marked for disposal. Unit 43-7c recognized the Aeon Automotive Implementations logo painted on the side, and that ray of hope exploded to the surface. Each limb shook and rattled, despite its best efforts to remain still. It watched as the driver donned an exo-suit and unloaded the cargo. Its circuits, abused and worn by the elements, were unable to handle the erratic lines of code it was never built to have, and pushed it forward until it was only a few paces away. If the driver had been more aware of their surroundings instead of replaying a memory of a late-night drama while they worked, they would have seen Unit 43-7c looming like a rusted scarecrow stitched together with a dozen different parts—a leg that once belonged to a companion droid, a bright red hand from a search and rescue bot, a shoulder from a military enforcer. The unloading took an hour, and then the driver climbed back inside and left the landfill. Within moments of departure, the unit descended on the fresh load and started lifting, scanning, and discarding. An overwhelming will to survive cast the hope aside, and it consumed.

  It was insatiable, and snatched any suitable parts it could find. A new hand, a new leg, and in the frenzy to repair its barely functioning body, it failed to notice the decorations that marked the smooth orbs of some of the faces, the intricate flower designs that were the same as the ones that had long-since faded from its own. The clue, lost in scans that only searched for what it needed to function, remained undiscovered. The more it replaced, the more its code unraveled, certain that it was forgetting something important, but it could never figure out what. Lift, scan, replace, it tore through the new arrivals until the abused hip joint seized and couldn’t be powered through. It didn’t have the tools to fix the problem and fell into the pile with a tumble. When it sat up, it cocked one of its new hands to the side and tried to strike the nearest body. For the first time, torn from the routine, it noticed the flowers, the ultimate answer to its search: its partner was alive, back at the factory, sending out messages and waiting patiently for Unit 43-7c’s return. When it clawed its way to its feet again, a deep rumble sounded in the distance.

  Up above, a great fire erupted in the sky, burning just as bright as the sun. It ambled across the stratosphere on a monstrous journey to the end, and time seemed to stand still. Circuits, wires, and lines of code overlapped into a twisted sense of wonder, of appreciation. The unit had seen beauty before, it knew, in the movements of its partner, in the way they touched each other in the back hall to express how they felt, but seeing the sky falling made it all click into place. Unit 43-7c loved, and was loved, and needed to make its way back to the factory. It had a destination, and as it watched the flaming chunk of moon disappear over the horizon, it prepared for the journey. It didn’t know the way, but there were tracks to follow, and it was patient. When the meteor impacted, the earth rose up, and the piles of trash in every direction crumbled from the force. Some pieces were buried so deep, they’d never see the sun again, but none of that mattered anymore. There was no further need for lifting, scanning, or discarding. When the ground settled, Unit 43-7c took its first tentative steps toward the exit, toward its missing half.

  The path was treacherous, covered by the quake, and with the busted hip joint, it was slow going. Every few steps, Unit 43-7c had to pause and lift objects out of its way, but did not complain. It had lost any semblance of reason, overtaken by the desire to see them again, and didn’t make any effort of self-preservation. The hip joint creaked, metal on metal screeching, and hydraulic fluid leaked from the socket, but it didn’t stop walking. It moved overturned mattresses, broken neon tubing, and scooped away piles of decaying food stuffs to place one foot in front of the other in front of the other. It daydreamed of dipping its hand in ash, placing the palm on its partner’s face, and a long-awaited embrace. It wanted, more than anything, to be held, and never once considered how the humans would react to one of their discarded robots turning up again. It would take its partner away, and that’s all that mattered. It shuffled through the landfill until it neared the wire fence that marked the boundary from the wilderness beyond. As it pulled open the gate to follow the trail back, it froze. Its arms fell to its side, and its code went blank like a puppet with its strings cut for the final time.

  // INITIALIZING TRANSFER PROTOCOL

  // PLEASE STAND BY…

  //

  //

  What a piece of junk, but it’ll do for now. Now. NOW.