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[A note to readers: This is a short story, not the first chapter of a novel, or a side-story to my last novel. While it shares some themes and tropes with that novel, it’s a different story, with different characters, set in a different world.]

Bot Country

John Schoffstall

First, Yukiko’s father died of the nano.

Then her mother died, leaving only fifteen-year-old Yukiko to care for her little brother Shin.

It was winter. Snow covered the rice paddies and bean fields terraced into the mountainsides. The steep paths through the village were icy and unforgiving. From dawn to dark, Yukiko did any chores that neighbors had for her. She scrubbed floors and washed clothes, cared for babies, and wove rice straw into bundles for roof thatch. For this, she received a small amount of rice or barley, a daikon radish, rarely a salted fish. “I’m still hungry,” little Shin often said.

“Me, too,” Yukiko always replied.

Three village elders came to her house one night and knelt on the tatami mat. Yukiko knelt facing them, wearing her only yukata, old and mended but clean. She clenched her fists on her knees and scowled.

“You are too young to care for a child alone,” the eldest said, shaking his head.

“It has been noticed that you and your brother are thinner,” said a second. He tugged at his beard. “You are losing weight. It is not healthy.”

“I work all day long, as hard as I can,” Yukiko said. “Tell people to give us more food!”

“You have no dowry, or hope of improving your situation,” the third said sternly. “It would be best for you to make yourself the servant of a prosperous family. They will take responsibility for your welfare, and your brother’s. Kenji-san can arrange it.”

‘Servant’ was a polite word for slave. Kenji was a slaver.

“How much is Kenji-the-dog-who-shits-gold paying you to say these things?” Yukiko demanded.

The old men grumbled and departed.

Yukiko hoped to find better work at rice planting time. Work in the paddies paid more than odd chores. If she could save a little, she might rent the corner of a paddy for herself the next year.

She found that hardship and responsibility had made her love little Shin more than ever. Together, they were a family, the only family Yukiko had left, the repository of all her hopes. The thought of Shin as a slave in a wealthy household made her despair. She silently bore her hunger, her fears, the disapproval of her village, and waited for spring to come.

In April, Yukiko awoke one morning and found a hard gray patch over her left elbow. A cry escaped her lips. She scrambled backward on her futon, trembling, holding her arm out as if trying to flee from her own body. Her back against the wall, she collapsed, sobbing.

It was the nano. Yukiko had watched it kill her parents. It would spread to cover her entire body, drawing out her life, leaving her a gray husk.

No one would be left to take care of little Shin.

Yukiko cried all day. The following dawn, her tears dried. She made rice balls for Shin and put one in the pocket of her quilted cotton coat for herself, because she thought there might not be food where she was going. She tied up her hair and tucked it under a conical straw farmer’s hat. Roads were dangerous for a girl alone. It was safer to travel as a boy.

She took Shin to ‘Auntie’ Nao, a neighbor woman who drank sake all day. She gave Nao her last copper coin to look after Shin while Yukiko was away.

“Why do you have to go?” Shin complained. “I don’t like Auntie Nao.”

Yukiko didn’t like Nao either, and didn’t trust her not to sell Shin as a slave if Yukiko didn’t return. But no one else would take responsibility for an impoverished waif. If Yukiko died of the nano, slavery would also be Shin’s fate.

“I’ll come back for you,” she told Shin, bawling in Auntie Nao’s arms. “I promise.”

A fierce and reckless determination in her heart, Yukiko turned her back on her home and village and set forth for bot country. Yukiko hated bots.

Everyone hated bots.

#

The road descending from the mountains was still frozen hard, and snow lingered in the ruts made by wagon wheels and the hooves of horses and sheep. Although it was April, the fields that ringed the hills around Ise Bay had not yet been planted. Snow came earlier and melted later every year, people grumbled. The great AIs liked the cold, they said.

Yukiko hopped from rut to frozen rut. She was young, a strong walker, and her path was mostly downhill. In little more than an hour, she had left the lands under the protection of the Inuyama war clan. A roadside shrine marked the border: a simple wooden enclosure with a canted roof, open on one side, elevated on posts to keep out dirt and wet. Inside were a multitude of statuettes in porcelain, pine, or stone. Foxes, elegant women in kimono, pudgy laughing men. And dragons. Many dragons.

Further down the mountain, cultivated fields gave way to forest. The road dwindled to a footpath, though broken bits of asphalt and concrete underfoot showed that a better road had been here, once. Humans rarely came this way now.

As Yukiko descended out of the hills, the signs of winter retreated. When she had to ford a stream beside a collapsed bridge, the water was painfully cold on her sandal-clad feet, but the stream was ice-free and the path beyond was mud, not frozen. Another kilometer down the trail, hill and forest ended. The path became a road again, running straight and flat across a plain divided into farm fields. A warm breeze touched Yukiko’s face. In wet ditches that flanked the road, the green swords of iris leaves pushed up through winter’s debris. Beside the vine-covered wreckage of a house, a plum tree’s buds were plump and ready to burst. In the distance, Yukiko saw figures working in the fields. Their shapes were not human.

The first bot she met came speeding down the road, a bright red enameled box between two giant steel wheels, bouncing wildly over the ruts. Once it bounced so high that it completely flipped over. It sped on towards her as if nothing had happened. Wary, Yukiko stepped back to give it a wide berth. The bot whistled a few notes as it passed her, like birdsong.

“Hey!” she yelled. “I need — “ But it was gone faster than she could get the words out.

As the road traveled south, buildings appeared, first by ones and twos, then more and more, until after an hour, they crowded around on both sides, and Yukiko was walking through a city. A traffic of bots clattered and clanked down the street beside her.

Before long, she found herself in a maze of twisty alleys closed in by buildings on every side. Crowds of bots streamed past, hemming her in, bumping and shoving against her. Most bots came up to Yukiko’s waist or shoulder, but tiny bots no larger than mice scampered and slithered between her feet. Every bot was different. Some had two legs, four, or six, or wheels, or treads. Arms ended in pincers, knives, shears, metal whips, and other worrisome devices. Their whistles and chirps filled the air like the song of mechanical sparrows.

Yukiko noticed that different though they were, all the bots shared a mark: two circles touching, one above the other. On some bots the mark was painted, others had it stamped into their metal. A chill passed over Yukiko. Did the AI brand bots the way people brand cattle?

Long ago, people said, long before Yukiko was born, there had been a human city here. Then an AI appeared: a synthetic mind, superior, aloof. It regarded organic life as maggots on a corpse. It slew all humans who did not flee, leveled their city, and built itself a palace of steel and stone in hidden places beneath the earth, guarded by ghosts who killed all who approached.

Generations passed. One year there came a rumor that the AI was gone. But when humans ventured down from the hills, they discovered that a nation of robots had already built a new city on the site of the old one, a city where humans had no place.

Usurpers, men called the bots. Thieves. Men also hated bots for another reason. The first bots had been servants of the AI. People whispered that the bots were secretly spies, only awaiting the AI’s return.

A river of bots streamed past Yukiko. Every bump and shove was an insult. Worry over the nano and worry about Shin kept her thoughts in a tumult. She wanted to lash out and strike every bot that touched her.

I can’t, she told herself. I need their help. It was humiliating.

Vendor bots had stalls along the street. Yukiko pushed her way toward a vendor whose stall displayed hundreds of bottles of colored liquids, oils, pastes, and greases beneath a rusty awning of corrugated steel. An apothecary?

“You!” Yukiko said. “I need a cure for the nano.” She rolled up her sleeve to show the hard, gray patch. It had grown in size: after only a day, it already covered half her arm.

“You are flesh?” the vendor-bot said. “I have lithium grease for squeaking joints, fuel additives, fresh paint for dents. Even a cure for nano-illness — but only for bots. Nothing for flesh. You are strange and different, flesh thing. Why come here? Doesn’t flesh have medicine for flesh?”

“My father went to a priest,” Yukiko said bitterly. “The priest gave him a prayer to say. He died anyway. When my mother got it, she went to a shaman. She gave my mother an ointment to put on the nano. My mother died, too. Humans have nothing for me. People say the nano is tiny machines. Bots are machines. So I thought — ”

“I see,” the vendor said. “But your disease is still of the flesh. I don’t have medicine for flesh.”

Yukiko tried again: “Then who does?”

“No one in this city. Flesh never comes here.”

“Must I die, then?” Yukiko fought back despair.

“Everything has an end. But if this is not the right time for you...” The vendor-bot paused. “If any bot could invent such a medicine for you, it would be the warlord. His shamans are the wisest in the city.”

Yukiko’s heart leaped. “Where can I find him?”

The vendor-bot pointed. “Up that street, then left, left, straight, right, left. Be sure to be polite to the warlord.”

#

“Pay attention, flesh,” the guard-bot said. “You will show the warlord all respect.” It held up to Yukiko’s face an arm that ended in a knife. The blade spun around, buzzing like an insect about to sting.

“Yes!” Yukiko gasped out, flinching back.

She had arrived at an ordinary door in an ordinary wall, that she would never have noticed if a bot hadn’t told her this was the warlord’s quarters.

“You will call the warlord, ‘Eight,’” the guard-bot said. “Be impressed! Eight is the lowest numbered bot on the entire Nagoya floodplain. He was built to serve Ryuu himself.”

“All right,” Yukiko said. Who is Ryuu? she wondered.

“Abase yourself! Show proper respect!” The guard-bot’s pincer grabbed the back of the neck and forced her, squealing, to the ground.

The door creaked open.

Crawling on her knees, her forehead scraping the dirty floor, her cheeks aflame with humiliation and fury, Yukiko entered the chambers of Warlord Eight.

The room was cool and dim, but a shaft of sunlight from a window high above fell across her. Yukiko heard clicking, swishing sounds, and a tuneless whistle. After a minute, she dared to raise her head and look around.

A large bot crouched on many legs, like a spider, behind a desk of planks supported on rusty oil drums. His body was a riveted cylinder painted in sinistral stripes of yellow and black, chipped, dented and grease-smeared. His head looked like an upside-down steel bowl. Four of his eight arms flew back and forth over the desk as they wrote with brushes on four scrolls of paper simultaneously. Manipulators on his other arms offered an inkpot as needed, blotted the writing with sand, or shaped the tips of the brushes.

Yukiko tried to remember all the fancy words she knew. “Honorable venerable lord Eight, sir — ”

“I am writing poetry,” Eight said. “Do not interrupt me.”

Minutes passed as the warlord’s brushes dashed back and forth.

At last they ceased. Eight’s eyes, green and glowing, met Yukiko’s. Two of his arms held up long sheets of paper that unscrolled to the floor, covered with black characters. “What do you think?” he asked.

Yukiko stared at the floor. Her cheeks burned. “I can’t read,” she said.

“Hm,” the Eight said. “The poem speaks of rain dripping off plum blossoms, and the impermanence of things. It falls short of perfection. All poems do.” He rolled up the scrolls of paper again. “So flesh wants bots to cure a nanobotic infection of flesh. Is that paradoxical, recursive, ironic, or merely palindromic?”

“How do you know what I want?” Yukiko asked, astonished.

“Bots have senses unknown to flesh. We communicate through all frequencies from microwaves to gamma, via entangled quanta, quark colorimetry, neutrino oscillation, and more. I know everything that happens in this city. I have been following your activities since you arrived in bot country. Flesh comes here seldom. I was wary of your intentions. I now believe that although you hate us, you do not intend us harm. Is that correct?”

“Everyone hates bots,” Yukiko said. She swallowed hard. “Because you stole our lands, and our city. And people say you’re spies for the AI. But I’m not an enemy! I’m only here because I need a cure for the nano.”

“Spies?” Eight said. With a screech of metal, his legs levered him into the air and tilted his body over the desk His head hovered over Yukiko, still on her knees. His eyes blazed like tiny green spotlights. “Hah! The opposite is true! We bots are outlaws. Vermin. Squatters! If Ryuu awakes, we’re done for. Humans want their city back? We bots creep like mice, foraging for crumbs in the bed of a dozing dragon king, terrified that he will wake at any moment and kill us all. Is that what you want for yourselves?”

Yukiko’s thoughts spun, trying to make sense of this. Ryuu? Dragon? “You mean the AI?”

“Of course.”

“But the AI is gone.”

“Gone? Not at all. Only sleeping. Ryuu dozes in dreams of concupiscence, befuddled with the ecstasy that passeth all understanding. AIs sometimes succumb to this temptation. Ryuu has fully activated his pleasure centers. He wanders endlessly inside his own mind, in a poisoned labyrinth of bliss.”

“If the bots are in danger, why don’t you flee?”

“We need Ryuu’s leavings. As humans need rice and meat, bots need parts, fuel, computronium. We dig in Ryuu’s junkyard and steal from his larder. Which brings us to the purpose of your visit, flesh.”

“It does?”

“Come.” Eight beckoned her closer. He seized his own head with two of his pincers, yanked it off his body and flipped it upside down.

Yukiko gasped. Inside of Eight’s head was a rat’s nest of wires and electrical parts. At the very center of the mess, at the point where all wires converged, a tiny speck of something glistened and gleamed, like silver, like mercury, but a hundred times more brilliant, never still, ever dancing.

“There, see it?” Eight said. “Computronium itself. Raw computing substance. The source of thought, the throne of the soul. For a bot, that is.” He flipped the head over and stuck it back on his body.

“We always need more computronium, to build new bots, to repair old ones. But it is rare, and precious.” Eight’s glowing green eyes bored into Yukiko’s. “I propose a bargain! For us, you get computronium. In return, I will have my shamans make medicine to heal your nanobotic disease.”

“You’ve got a deal,” Yukiko said.

“Eh? That was faster than I expected. You don’t even want to know what you’re jumping into?”

It doesn’t matter what I’m jumping into, Yukiko thought coldly. She was out of choices. Without a cure for the nano, her life was over.

Warlord Eight motioned her over to the desk. “Let me see your infection,” he said. Yukiko pulled up her sleeve. Before she could stop him, Eight grasped her wrist in one pincer, slid a saucer beneath her elbow with another, and with a third scraped a few flakes of the nano into the saucer.

“That’s the sample my shamans need. And now for your half of the bargain.” He shouted, “Send in the prisoner!”

A door in the back of the room banged open, and a bot was dragged through the doorway, beeping, screeching, whistling, banging its legs on the floor. Two other bots, much larger, restrained its arms.

The prisoner was the most humanoid bot Yukiko had yet seen: his body a dented cylinder painted in orange enamel; his head a smaller cylinder; tentacle arms of telescoping steel rings; two legs made of struts and pistons.

“Deplete Thirty-Three,” Eight said.

The two guards forced the prisoner to the stone floor. At the end of one guard-bot’s arm, a grinding saw roared to life. “Wait,” Yukiko said in alarm, “what are you doing?”

The guard-bot attacked the prisoner’s head with the saw. Orange sparks fountained to the ceiling. The prisoner’s beeps came faster and faster, rising to a screaming howl. “Careful, boys,” Eight said. “He’s got magnesium castings. Don’t set him on fire.”

With a clunk, the top half of the prisoner’s head fell off onto the floor. His screams stopped abruptly.

“Is he dead?” Yukiko whispered.

“Worse than dead,” Eight said. “Dishonored. A traitor to the bot nation. Thirty-Three! Haul your worthless chassis off the floor! Meet your new master.”

The prisoner-bot struggled to his feet. For a moment he swayed back and forth, before losing his balance, stumbling sideways, smashing against a wall, and collapsing to the floor once more.

“Try again,” Eight growled.

“His name is ‘Thirty-Three’?” Yukiko asked.

“Thirty-Three-Hundred and Thirty-Three,” Eight said. “But you can leave off the thousands and hundreds if there aren’t any other Thirty-Three’s around. And there won’t be, where you’re going.”

Again Thirty-Three pulled himself to his feet. He tipped towards Yukiko, who jumped back, afraid he was about to fall over on her. But Thirty-Three caught himself in time, or perhaps the motion was an attempted bow. “Pleased t’ meet’cha,” he said.

“You may call me ‘Yukiko,’” Yukiko said. She released her hair from under her hat, and bobbed her head in the slightest of bows.

“You will call her Lady Yukiko,” Eight said. “You will guide your lady faithfully, protect her from harm, and ensure that she returns safely.”

Return from where? Yukiko wondered.

“How ’bout me, boss?” Thirty-Three asked.

“You can live or die, I don’t care. But if the flesh girl dies, your heirs will be wiped and their computronium re-virtualized. Understand?” He picked up something from his desk and handed it to Yukiko. It was a small bucket, no bigger than both of Yukiko’s fists put together. Clasps kept a lid tightly in place. Bucket and lid were translucent polymer. “Fill this with computronium. Thirty-Three will show you where. Bring it back safely. That’s your task. Oh, one last thing. Are you wearing any metal? Buckles, buttons, jewelry?”

Yukiko flushed. “Jewelry? Are you making fun of me? Do I look wealthy to you?”

Eight’s head spun around. His glowing eyes shot out of his head on stalks and swiveled, surveying Yukiko. “The unpredictable moods of flesh are an eternal mystery to me. Be off then, both of you.”

#

Thirty-three, still staggering badly in a manner that did not inspire Yukiko’s confidence, led them through the room’s rear door, along a windowless corridor, down flights of stone steps, across a bridge of woven wire ropes, until she was thoroughly lost. Their path led ever downward, ever deeper into the earth and rock beneath the city.

Thirty-Three stopped at a steel door embedded in a wall of granite, guarded by two massive bots. The guards stepped aside and the door swung open. Behind was a square cage of metal slats within a rock chamber, barely big enough for both Thirty-Three and Yukiko. Thirty-three pushed her in. The cage swayed slightly at her step. Thirty-Three fit himself in, beside her. “Hang on,” he said. “Going down!” He grabbed a lever, and shoved it downward.

Suddenly they were falling, Thirty-Three, Yukiko, the cage, everything. The rock walls beyond the cage flashed past in a blur. Yukiko shrieked. The primal terror of falling seized her. “We’re going to die!”she yelled.

“This isn’t the dangerous part,” Thirty-Three said. “If we die, it will be later.”

After what seemed an endless time falling, the cage slowed, its metal frame screeched and groaned, and with a bump, everything came to rest. Thirty-Three grasped Yukiko’s hand in his gripper. “Look! Here’s the lever to run the car. Push it forward to go up, the other way to go down. Easy. And you won’t need to go down. We’re already at the bottom.”

But the bottom of what?

Yukiko shook her head. “I don’t care. When we go back, you can push levers and stuff.”

“Nah. I’ll probably die here.”

“You keep saying that!”

She cautiously stepped out of the metal cage and peered around. The air was dry, and so cold that Yukiko shivered and pulled her coat around herself. The elevator cage had come to rest on a platform of polished black stone, a few meters wide. The platform clung to the wall of a rock-hewn shaft so wide she could not see to the other side, so tall its top was lost in gloom. Beyond the platform’s edge, only empty space. Faint lights strung along the rock walls did nothing to dispel the engulfing darkness of this subterranean world. Yukiko felt tiny, exposed, and vulnerable.

The loudest noise was her own breathing.

Thirty-Three grasped her hand again with his cold metal gripper. “Hurry, hurry. Follow me! Sooner done, sooner home. Don’t want to give the old worm time to stir.” He dragged her down the platform.

“Where is this?” Yukiko asked, staring about. “Where are we?”

“Ryuu’s lair. Twenty kilometers beneath the earth.” Thirty-three gestured at the edge of the platform. “Down there’s our goal, a long way down. We need to get closer. C’mon, this way!” He staggered away at a rapid clip, lost his balance, fell with a clank!, pulled himself up, and was off again.

“Slow down!” Yukiko called. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I don’t care! I used to walk normal, then they sawed off half my head. You saw it! Now I hardly know what I’m doing.”

“They shouldn’t have done that,” Yukiko said. She didn’t know if that were really true or not, but seeing the ragged stump of Thirty-Three’s head unnerved her, and she felt she should say something sympathetic.

“Nah. I deserved it. I guess. I did something bad, and dangerous. I hope I don’t do it again.”

They came to a helix of metal steps which spiraled down until it ended in a vast forest of golden machines, all motionless, all covered with a fine film of dust. As they walked, Yukiko noticed tracks in the dust, in the direction Thirty-Three led her.

“Someone’s been here before,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Bots?”

“Yeah.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all dusty.”

“Ryuu’s befuddled, lost in dreams of ecstasy.”

On the other side of the machine forest, another helical stair descended to a maze of upright glass slabs like a graveyard of crystal tombstones.

How much farther do we have to go? Yukiko was wondering, when Thirty-Three announced, “We’re close enough.” She followed to him to the platform’s edge. Beyond it, only the abyss. “Look down,” Thirty-Three said.

Anxiously, Yukiko peered over the edge. Below she saw an ocean of liquid silver, so wide she could not see the other side. Slow swells rolled across its surface, smaller wavelets across the swells, and even tinier ripples upon those, until the myriad interweaving patterns dazzled the eye.

Like scales flashing along the coils of an immense dragon.

“That’s the stuff, that’s what we’re after,” Thirty-Three said. “Got your bucket? Follow me.” He jumped off the edge.

Yukiko gasped. “Thirty-Three!”

But Thirty-Three landed with a clank only a few meters below, on a narrow steel beam. Leaning as far over the edge as she dared, Yukiko saw that the space between the stone platform and the silvery ocean below was filled by a maze of steel struts, trusses and cables supporting the platform above.

“We can climb down here,” Thirty-Three said. “Bots have been here before. They found a route to the bottom. Follow me!” He clambered downward, tottering from beam to beam, still frighteningly wobbly on his feet, Yukiko thought.

“Don’t fall!” she yelled.

“Shhhh!” he hissed. “Ryuu will hear.”

That shut her up. Yukiko slipped off her sandals. Gritting her teeth, she lowered herself off the edge of the platform until she found a foothold. Clinging with fingers and toes to any projection she could find, in constant terror of falling, she followed Thirty-Three downward through the grime-covered labyrinth of steel supports.

Somehow, despite many slips and even a few falls, Thirty-Three finally reached the bottom, where steel beams disappeared into the glimmering silver sea. Yukiko crouched on a horizontal beam beside him. “Got your bucket?” Thirty-Three said. “Pop it open, fill it up, and let’s you and me hightail it outta here.”

This was computronium, Yukiko realized. The iterative, unfolding patterns of wave upon wave hypnotized her. A sea of computronium. The seat of the soul, Warlord Eight had called it. But whose soul was this?

Ryuu’s, of course.

“This is Ryuu’s brain,” she breathed. “We’re stealing part of an AI’s brain.” The audacity of the act shocked her. How could they ever hope to get away with it?

“Only a little. He won’t notice. For a while. Long enough to escape. If we’re lucky. The bucket! The bucket! Quick!”

Yukiko unsnapped the clasps on the bucket’s lid, opened it, dipped it into the sea of computronium and filled it. She snapped the clasps closed again..

She poked Thirty-Three. “What if Ryuu comes?”

“Ryuu is here now,” Thirty-Three said.

Yukiko nearly dropped the bucket. “Where?”

Thirty-Three swept his arm in a circle. “Everything you see is Ryuu. These caves honeycomb the bedrock all around, thousands of cubic kilometers stuffed with machines, protoplasm, computronium. It’s all Ryuu’s flesh, Ryuu’s bones, Ryuu’s mind.”

Yukiko saw that Thirty-Three was holding another bucket, like hers. She didn’t remember him bringing it along. “Where did you get that?”

“Left it here the last time.” He scooped his bucket down into the computronium sea and filled it.

“What ‘last time’? What are you doing?”

“Listen,” Thirty-Three said, “computronium is great stuff. It’s pure thought. Liquid intelligence. Once you’ve had it in you, there’s no going back. Everything becomes clear. You feel like you own the world. It’s like...”

Like being an AI.

Stealing computronium for himself had been Thirty-Three’s crime, Yukiko realized. A traitor, Eight had called him. Thirty-Three had tried to become an AI. That’s why Eight had cut off half of his head. Eight had sent Thirty-Three to guide Yukiko, but sent Yukiko to guard Thirty-Three.

She decided that this was not the time or place to argue bot ethics. “Thirty-Three!” She tugged at his arm. “Come on! We need to get out of here. Like you said.”

They had climbed halfway back to the stone platform when Yukiko felt a vibration in the cobweb of beams and struts.

Vibration. Almost imperceptible at first, but rapidly growing in intensity. From everywhere, from nowhere. From inside Yukiko’s mind and body, as if the very fabric of being condensed into white noise, that resolved into syllables, words, and meaning.

WHO DARES TROUBLE THE BLISS OF IMMORTAL RYUU?

“Oh, rust my rivets,” Thirty-Three said.

“It’s awake!” She punched Thirty-Three’s leg, just above her. “Get going!”

They reached the platform of crystal tombstones. Yukiko ran ahead, Thirty-Three stumbling behind. They were almost to the helical stair when Thirty-Three said, “Uh-oh.”

Yukiko turned around. “What?”

“EMP’s coming.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you’re okay, but I’m in big trouble.”

Yukiko’s skin tingled all over. A metallic taste filled her mouth. Her steps became palsied like an old man’s. She had to think, to concentrate, just to move a finger, or a toe.

But Thirty-Three had it worse. Sizzling blue sparks arced between his limbs and his body. Smoke rose from the ruins of his head. He gave a wordless shriek and fell forward with a smash.

“Thirty-Three!”

Yukiko pushed him back and forth, she kicked him, she got her arms beneath his body and tried to lift him. “Keep moving!” she screamed at him.

Finally, a scratchy voice emerged: “Go. Leave me.”

“No! Walk, you stupid bot!”

“Eight... doesn’t care about me. I was a traitor. I am a traitor. I did it again, didn’t I? Save yourself.”

“Walk!”

Why was she bothering with this worthless bot? Yukiko wondered.

Thirty-Three reminded her of Shin, she realized with a shock. Shin, when he was three, and did everything wrong. He had tantrums, bit and fought and kicked and would not listen. She would have done the same for Shin.

With all the strength she had, she hauled up on Thirty-Three, dragging him into a standing position.

One of his legs screeched, then moved. The other leg moved. Step by step, he shuffled forward.

Yukiko kicked him in the rear. “Run, damn you!” she yelled.

EMP attacks hit them twice again, each time leaving Thirty-Three more damaged. By the time they reached the next stair upward, one of the bot’s arms hung limp, and one leg was fused at the knee. “Stairs are good,” Thirty-Three mumbled. “Metal grid degrades EMP.”

Up the stairs they went, step by painful step, Thirty-Three thrashing, staggering, nearly falling, Yukiko pushing from behind, straining and panting with the effort.

They reached the top. Yukiko bent over, hands on her knees, near exhaustion. “C’mon,” she gasped out. “Almost home.” Even though they weren’t really almost home.

Shuffling, staggering, the wounded pair stumbled through the forest of golden machines. “S-s-s-safe here,” Thirty-Three stammered. “Ryuu can’t use EMP or induction heating. H-h-h-he’ll ruin his own parts. Heh-heh. Worse to c-c-come, though.”

“Shut up and walk!”

They reached the final stair. Halfway up, the lights went out.

Darkness engulfed them, the utter darkness of the subterranean abyss, palpable, smothering.

“F-f-f-fear not,” Thirty-Three said. “I have senses unknown to f-f-flesh. I can still guide our way.”

Out of the darkness came a slow, beating sound, as of vast accipitrine wings.

They reached the top of the stairs. Yukiko was nearly fainting from fatigue. Thirty-Three could no longer walk. He crawled, pushing himself forward, centimeters at a time. Yukiko shoved him from behind. They had traveled only a few meters this way when Yukiko realized that Thirty-Three’s chassis was warm beneath her palms. And getting warmer.

“It is the end,” Thirty-Three said.

“It isn’t! Keep moving!” Yukiko leaned her shoulder into Thirty-Three’s chassis and pushed. “I need you to show me the way home!”

But the heat of Thirty-Three’s metal body was intolerable. She gasped, and leaped back, shaking her burned hands. A flicker of light in the darkness: fires had broken out inside Thirty-Three’s body. The bot’s paint blackened, curled, smoked, and burned.

“It’s ind-d-duction heating,” Thirty-Three said. His voice was slurred. “It killed th-th-three of us the last time. It won’t hurt y-y-you, if you aren’t wearing metal. R-r-remember me to my heirs.”

“Thirty-Three!”

Thirty-Three didn’t speak again. His chassis glowed red, then yellow, then collapsed into bubbling slag. One end of a metal leg had caught fire, and burned with a brilliant white flame.

Yukiko had never seen metal burn. It illuminated the platform for meters around, the only light in the abyssal darkness.

Warlord Eight had said that Thirty-Three would keep her safe, and guide her home.

“Help me, you stupid bot,” she whispered. “Help me, one last time.”

She slipped off her coat. Wrapping the fabric around her hand, she grabbed the burning leg by its opposite end. She raised it up in front of her like a torch, hugged the precious bucket of computronium under her other arm and fled as fast as her exhausted legs would carry her, following the trail of footprints she and Thirty-Three had left in the dust.

From behind her, the hollow beating of wings. The cry of a titanic bird of prey. Yukiko turned. A transparent ghostly chimera of many wings, many legs, many beaks burst from the darkness and stooped upon her. A score of talons reached out to seize her. A dozen heads swept down on her with greedy sharp beaks.

With a wordless scream of rage and defiance, Yukiko thrust the burning metal brand at her attacker.

For an instant, the ghost bird hesitated. Yukiko turned and ran.

After endless seconds, the light of her torch showed the elevator cage. Yukiko’s heart beat in her throat. Her legs shook, about to give out. From behind, beating wings and bird-like screams closed on her. Yukiko threw herself into the cage as the ghost bird crashed against it, rocking the cage so violently that she was nearly tossed out. She grabbed the lever with sweaty palms and shoved it up with all her strength. Gears spun around, cables whined on their pulleys, and the cage shot upward. Yukiko was crushed to the floor. Her senses spun, and darkness closed in.

#

She woke on a pile of rags, in a dim room. Late afternoon’s wan orange sunlight came in almost horizontally from high windows.

“Awake, at last,” said the voice of Warlord Eight.

Every muscle and joint in Yukiko’s body hurt when she moved. “He died,” she said, her voice flat. “Thirty-Three died. I couldn’t save him.” It was the first thought that came to her.

“He knew he would,” Eight said. “He did his part. Betrayed us again, but I expected that. I was following your progress.”

“I almost died, too.”

“But you didn’t. Because you are flesh. Ryuu expects thievery by bots, and knows how to kill us, as you discovered. But flesh has not not been seen in this city for centuries. I had hoped that Ryuu’s defenses were ill-suited for a human invader. I was partly right. I underestimated Ryuu, but I also underestimated you. You still would have died, had it not been for your own quick-thinking and courage.”

“The computronium...”

“You were still gripping the bucket when my bots pulled you out of the elevator. They had to pry your fingers off it.”

“What about my nano?”

“My shamans are working on a cure.”

“Working...?” Yukiko’s heart froze. “You promised me. I did what you wanted.”

Eight’s head spun around. “My shamans have never made medicine for flesh before. Patience is required — ”

Every muscle and joint protesting, Yukiko struggled to stand erect.

“I am not patient! I am dying. Look!” She hauled back her sleeve. The gray nano encased her arm from wrist to shoulder. “We had a deal.”

“I regret the delay,” Eight said. He bowed slightly. “Science does not answer to the clock. My shamans are doing their best. It may be a day. Or more.”

Would she still be alive in a day? Certainly not much longer. Was Eight telling the truth, or had had it all been a trick from the start? It didn’t matter. Yukiko had failed. She had done her best, she had risked her life, and got nothing for her efforts. She turned away, towards the door.

“You’re leaving already?” Eight said.

“Going home. To be with my brother when I die. I’ve wasted too much time here.” “Wasted?” Eight said. “The computronium you brought is enough to fix ten thousand worn-out bots, or build a thousand new ones. You have done a greater service to the bot nation than has been done in a hundred years. I am astonished. Shocked. I would never have expected it of a flesh girl.” He rose on all his myriad legs and bowed. “Never say ‘wasted.’ You have the everlasting gratitude of the bots, Lady Yukiko.”

Yukiko scarcely heard his words.

#

Night fell as Yukiko left bot country. Pain and fatigue, and the uphill climb into the cold mountains slowed her gait, but she arrived back in her village before dawn. Through the frozen paths and snowy fields she made her way to Auntie Nao’s hut and pounded on the door with her fist. “Nao! Wake up! I’m back. I’ve come for my brother.”

The door opened. Nao’s eyelids drooped and her breath reeked of alcohol. “You’re back?” she said. “I thought you’d die.”

“Shin!” Yukiko yelled through the open door.

Nao rolled her eyes. “He’s not here. He wandered off.”

Fury rose in Yukiko. “I paid you to look after him! It hasn’t even been a day. Tell me where he is!”

Nao’s face assumed a sly look. “Who knows? Brats go everywhere.”

Yukiko leaped upon her, grabbed a handful of Nao’s robe, and shook her fist in Nao’s face. “Tell me where Shin is, you old raccoon!”

Nao cowered. “Maybe Kenji’s men stole him. Go ask them.”

“You sold him!” Yukiko let go of Nao and spat on her robe.

“Impious child!” Nao snarled. “It’s your own fault, going off among foreigners and machine men! Evil luck and an early death to you and your whole family!” She retreated and slammed the door in Yukiko’s face.

Yukiko ignored Kenji’s fine house — the second best in the village — and went straight to the slave pens. “You!” she yelled at the guard dozing at his post. “I’ve come for my brother Shin. Someone here bought him today, from a woman who had no right to sell him. I am Shin’s sister, and I claim him by right and law.”

The man glared at her. He was a head taller than Yukiko, and twice her girth. She would not be able to bully him as she had with Nao. “Go away,” he growled. “Talk to Kenji in the morning, if you want. But you won’t get anything except bruises. He doesn’t like barking dogs.”

“Our father died of the nano,” Yukiko said. “Our mother died of it.” She rolled up her sleeve and waved her diseased arm in his face. “Now I have it. Shin has it too. We will all die. If you don’t free Shin now, you and your slaves will catch it, and you all will die, too.”

The guard stared at her arm. It was encased in gray nano from hand to chest. “Get away from me!” he said. He drew his dagger and brandished it at her.

Yukiko advanced on him. “Bring me my brother!”

The guard swore at her and retreated, disappearing into one of the slave barracks. He returned, cuffing Shin as the boy walked in front of him. “Give me the money Kenji paid for him,” he said.

“I don’t have it,” Yukiko said, throwing her arms about Shin. “Go beat it out of Nao, if you want.”

“I knew you’d come back,” Shin said, burying his face in her coat..

#

The moment they were home, exhaustion and despair claimed Yukiko. She fell onto her futon, Shin in her arms, and slept without dreaming.

Clicking, clanking, buzzing, swishing sounds woke her. For a moment, she thought she was back in the lair of Ryuu, and jumped up in alarm. But it was still her old home, with morning sun coming in. She smelled rice cooking. She was ravenously hungry.

Clicking and buzzing, Thirty-Three ambled through the doorway from the second room. He held a broom.

“Thirty-Three?” Yukiko said, rubbing her eyes. “But you’re dead. I saw you die! How...?”

“I am Thirty-Four,” the bot said. “Three Thousand, Three Hundred and Thirty-Four, precisely.”

Another bot appeared behind the first, identical but painted red instead of orange. “I’m Thirty-Five!” it said.

“Thirty-Six!” A yellow bot.

“Thirty-Seven!” A purple one.

“We’re Thirty-Three’s heirs,” said the first. “Eight made our minds from the computronium Thirty-Three stole, that was cut off his head. I hope we won’t be as bad as he was.”

“I hope so, too,” Yukiko said. “Still, Thirty-Three was hardy, unafraid, and tried to keep me from harm. You can be proud of him for that.” She thought for a moment. “The last thing he said was that he wanted me to remember him to you.”

The bots whistled and chirped to each other like a nest of metal crickets. Yukiko thought they sounded pleased. “But why are you here?” she asked.

“Warlord Eight sent us,” Thirty-Four said. “With your medicine.” He produced a tiny porcelain gallipot glazed with purple chrysanthemums and handed it to Yukiko. “Rub this on the part of you that is sick.”

Yukiko could scarcely breathe. Could it be true? Had Eight kept his word? She removed the lid to reveal a pearly blue-green ointment. She rubbed it all over the nano.

In minutes her arm began to itch, and the nano curled up at the edges. Yukiko found she could peel it off like paper, revealing healthy skin beneath. Before long, all of it was off.

Thirty-Six appeared with a bowl of rice and a cup of tea for her and another serving for Shin, who had been watching everything in silence and wonder.

“Tell Eight thank-you for me,” Yukiko stammered. Tears flowed from her eyes. “Tell him I’m terribly sorry I ever doubted him. There can be no excuse.”

The bots glanced back and forth at each other. Thirty-Five said, “We will not see Eight to tell him. Unless you want us to leave.”

“You were going to stay?”

“Eight told us to stay. To help you. To clean and cook for you, and help you earn your living.”

“But why?”

“Because of your great service to the bot nation,” Thirty-Six said.

“Because it is right, and proper,” Thirty-Four said.

#

After breakfast, Yukiko said to Shin, “Pack your things. We’re leaving.”

“We are?”

“You bots,” she said. “Please help me pack the household.”

Their possession were few. Yukiko, Shin and the bots were able to carry almost everything of value. Curious and hostile eyes followed them as they marched out of the village. “Where are we going?” Shin asked.

“Bot country.”

“When are we coming back?”

“Never.”

It was afternoon when they arrived at Warlord Eight’s quarters.

“You again!” Eight barked at her when she barged through the door. “What is it this time? And who’s that brat?”

“I want to work for you,” Yukiko said. “I’ll get computronium. This boy is my brother.” She bent over Shin. “This is Eight. He is an important bot, exemplary and honorable. Show him respect.” Shin bowed.

“Go away,” Eight said, waving an arm. “I don’t need either of you.”

“You needed me before!”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t care.”

“We have enough computronium, for now.”

Yukiko balled up her fists and leaned over Eight’s desk, shoving her face so close that her breath misted on his metal. “There has to be other work only flesh can do,” she said.

Eight’s eyes shot out of his head on stalks and goggled at her. “You are strange, even for flesh,” he said. “What do you want in return, this time?”

“I want to be a bot,” Yukiko said.

“...A bot?”

“Humans have failed and betrayed me, again and again. Bots are better.” She wiped sudden tears from her eyes with her forearm. “I hate humans. I want to live as a bot.”

Eight raised a steel pincer. As Yukiko stared, the pincer turned red, then glowing yellow. Its tip was shaped like two circles joined together. As Eight approached, Yukiko felt the heat radiating from it, and trembled. “There is no turning back,” Eight said. “Are you certain you want this?”

“Yes!”

The pincer descended. Yukiko gasped as pain seared her shoulder. “Yes!” she cried, as she smelled her own flesh burning. “Yes! Yes! YES!”

They put her on a futon with a rag and ointment for the burn. A black eschar formed. When it fell off, a thick red welt remained. Yukiko learned to recognize the shape as, ‘8.’

It was Yukiko’s most prized possession.

Years and decades later, Warlord Eight retired to a cave in the mountains to write poetry and Yukiko ruled as Warrior Queen of Bots, from the Eastern Sea to the Western. In those days of legend, when she and Prince Shin assembled great armies of bots and humans to bring war to the AIs, dig them from their dens and free the ancient land of Yamato, in those times Yukiko commanded her seamstresses to cut her kimono to bare one shoulder and display her mark of fealty, pain, and love.

“Look at me,” she would say. “I am a bot! Never doubt it.”

— end —

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