A Psalm for the Wild-Built

by Becky Chambers

  Dex’s frown deepened. “You’re saying that you and I … are the first human … and the first robot … to talk to each other since … since everything.”

  “Yes.” The robot beamed. “It’s an honor, truly.”

  Dex stood stupidly, rumpled towel wrapped around them, burned dinner in hand, uncombed hair weeping down their cheeks. “I … I’m gonna go get dressed.” They started to walk toward the wagon, then turned around. “You said your name is Mosscap?”

  “Technically, I am Splendid Speckled Mosscap, but our remembrance of humans is that you like to shorten names.”

  “Splendid Speckled Mosscap,” Dex repeated. “Like … the mushroom.”

  The robot’s metal cheeks rose. “Exactly like the mushroom!”

  Dex squinted. “Why?”

  “We name ourselves for the first thing we notice when we wake up. In my case, the first thing I noticed was a large clump of splendid speckled mosscaps.”

  This raised far more questions than it answered, but Dex let them lie, for now. “Okay. Mosscap. I’m Dex. Do you have a gender?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” Dex looked around the campsite, which suddenly looked hopelessly shabby. This was hardly the place for a moment like this. The least they could do was put on some pants. “Can you … can you wait a sec while I get dressed?”

  Mosscap nodded happily. “Of course. Can I watch?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” The robot looked a touch disappointed but shrugged it off. “No problem.”

  Dex set down their dinner on their chair, went to the wagon, put on some pants, pulled on a shirt, and combed their hair. These things, they knew how to do. Everything else had gone off the rails.

  Clothed and marginally presentable, Dex went back outside, where the robot was standing exactly where it had been minutes before.

  “Do you … want a chair?” Dex asked. “Do you sit?”

  “Oh! Well.” The robot considered this. “Yes, I’d like to sit in a chair, thank you. I have a remnant of chairs, but I’ve never sat in one.”

  Mosscap did not explain this odd statement further, and Dex was too addled to ask. They pulled the other chair—the one that didn’t get much use—off the side of the wagon and set it up beside the fire drum. “There you go.” They picked up their dinner and sat. They stopped, contemplating the plate. “You don’t eat, right?”

  Mosscap looked up from its examination of the guest chair. “No,” it said. The robot sat down and adjusted to its new situation. “Hm!”

  “Is it comfortable?” Dex asked. The chair had never had an occupant seven feet tall.

  “Oh, I don’t experience tactile pleasure,” Mosscap said. It leaned back in the chair experimentally, resulting in another small hm! “I’m aware of when I’m touching something, but the feeling is neither good nor bad. I simply touch things. But this”—it gestured at itself, and the chair—“is delightful, purely for the novelty. I’ve never sat this way before.”

  Dex took a forkful of their burned vegetables and began to eat. The meal was truly depressing, but Dex was hungry beyond the point of caring. “Do you need to sit?” Dex asked. “Do you get tired?”

  “No,” Mosscap said. “I sit or lie down if I want to alter my field of vision. Otherwise, I can stand for as long as my battery will allow.”

  Another old synapse fired, something from an archival video in school. “I thought you ran on oil.”

  “Ah!” The robot pointed a metal finger at Dex and smiled. It stood up from its chair and turned around, displaying the old-fashioned solar plating heavily bolted across its back. “Solar power wasn’t mainstream when we left, but it was around, and one of the manufacturers of the associated hardware provided us with these before our departure so we wouldn’t have to rely on human fuel.” Mosscap turned back around and, with a single forceful motion, yanked a panel off of its midsection to display the battery beneath. “We also received— What’s the matter?”

  Dex sat with their fork stalled halfway to their mouth, staring in mild shock at the thing that had just ripped its own stomach open.

  Mosscap stared back for a moment, then comprehended. “Oh, don’t worry! As I said, I feel nothing. That didn’t hurt. Look, see?” The robot snapped the panel back into place. “No problem.”

  Dex set the food-laden fork down on their plate. They rubbed their left temple lightly. “What is it you want?”

  The robot returned to its chair, leaning forward and folding its hands together in a pose of pure earnestness. “I am here,” it said, “to see how humans have gotten along in our absence. As is outlined in the Parting Promise, we are—”

  “Guaranteed complete freedom of travel in human territories, and rights equal to that of any Pangan citizen,” Dex said, the atrophied memory kicking in at last. “You were told you could come back any time, and that we wouldn’t be the ones to initiate contact. We’d leave you alone unless you wanted otherwise.”

  “Precisely. And my kind would still very much like to be left alone. But we’re also curious. We know our leaving the factories was a great inconvenience to you, and we wanted to make sure you’d done all right. That society had progressed in a positive direction without us.”

  “So, you’re … checking in?”

  “Essentially. It’s a little more specific than that.” Mosscap leaned back, noticing the armrests for the first time. “Are these for arms?”

  “Yes.”

  Mosscap stretched out its arms, bent them deliberately, and set them down with a chuckle. “Sorry, there’s just so much here to experience, I keep getting distracted.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that robots got distracted.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, can’t you … I don’t know, run programs in the background, or something?”

  Mosscap’s eyes adjusted their focus. “You understand how resource-heavy consciousness is, yes? No, I can’t do that any more than you can. But we’re getting off track. To the point—I was sent here to answer the following question: What do humans need?”

  Dex blinked. “That’s a question with a million answers.”

  “No doubt. And I obviously cannot ascertain any of those answers by talking to one individual alone.”

  “You … you can’t expect to talk to every person in Panga.”

  Mosscap laughed. “No, of course not. But I will take this question throughout Panga until I am satisfied that I have answer enough.”

  “How will you know when you’re satisfied?”

  The robot cocked its rectangular head at Dex. “How do you know when you’re satisfied?”

  Dex stared for a moment, then set their plate on the ground. “What do humans need? is an unanswerable question. That changes from person to person, minute to minute. We can’t predict our needs, beyond the base things we require to survive. It’s like…” They pointed to their wagon. “It’s like my teas.”

  “Your teas.”

  “Yes. I give them to people based on whatever kind of comfort they need, in that moment.”

  Something akin to epiphany blossomed on the robot’s face. “You’re a tea monk. A disciple of Allalae.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re not just Dex, you’re Sibling Dex. Ah, I apologize!” Mosscap pointed to the wagon. “These symbols—I should’ve realized.” It quickly stood and walked over to study the mural. “The bear, yes, and the All-Six Sigil, yes, yes, of course.” It ran a finger over a stripe of paint. “The symbols are there; I just didn’t recognize them. The style is so different.” It knelt down, following the colorful swirls. “So much has changed from what we recorded,” the robot said quietly.

  Dex’s brow furrowed as Mosscap stood in contemplation of the artwork. “I didn’t expect you to know the gods.”

  “If you mean the custom of human religion, we know everything we observed of you during our time together. But as for the gods themselves, they’re everywhere and in everything.” Mosscap smiled at D
ex. “Surely, you know this.”

  “Yes,” Dex said tersely. They weren’t about to get lectured on theology by a machine. “But just because a bird or a rock or a wagon follows the gods’ laws doesn’t mean those things know the gods are there.”

  “Well, I’m not a bird, or a rock, or a wagon. I think like you do. Which makes sense, after all. Someone like you made us. How could I think any other way?” The smile faded, replaced with a look of profound realization. “Oh. Oh, but this is perfect!”

  “What is?”

  Mosscap stepped excitedly toward Dex. “A disciple of Allalae. Who better to understand the needs of humans?” It pointed to the wagon. “You travel. From town to town.”

  “Y … es?”

  “You know the different communities, the different customs.”

  Dex didn’t like where this was going.

  Mosscap placed its palms on its chest. “Sibling Dex, I need you! I need a guide!” It stepped back toward the wagon, never taking its glowing eyes off Dex. It pointed again at the paint. “I didn’t recognize this. There will be so much I don’t recognize. And I knew this would be the case. I anticipated it, yes, but I have worried about it. I figured I would learn by trial and error, but with you—with you, my quest would be so much simpler. More efficient. More fun.” The robot smiled, as wide as its face plates allowed.

  Dex did not smile. Dex didn’t know what to do. “I … uh…”

  Mosscap laced its hinged hands together in plea. “Sibling Dex, travel with me through Panga. To the villages, and to the City. Travel with me and help me answer my question.”

  The robot could not be serious, Dex thought. Could it? Could robots joke? “That would take months,” Dex said. “I—I can’t.”

  “Why not? You said you travel from town to town.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “How would this be different?” Mosscap’s shoulders slumped, just a touch. “Do you not want my company?”

  “I don’t know you!” Dex sputtered. “I don’t know what you are! We’ve been talking for five minutes, and you want … you want…” They shook their head, trying in vain to iron their thoughts flat. “I’m not doing tea service right now. I’ve just left the villages. I won’t be back there for … for a while.”

  Mosscap’s head cocked. “Where are you going?”

  “Hart’s Brow. You know, the—”

  “The mountain,” Mosscap said with surprise. “Yes, I know it.” Dex could actually hear something whirring inside the robot’s head. “Why are you going there? There’s nothing … Oh, the hermitage! Are you going to the hermitage?”

  “Yes,” Dex said.

  “Ah!” Mosscap said, as if all questions were answered. Its head cocked again, like a dog searching for its ball. “Why? You do know it will be a ruin.”

  “I assumed. Have you been there?”

  “Not to the hermitage itself, but to the Antlers, yes. There are wonderful slime molds in the valleys there.” Mosscap’s tone resembled that of a person thinking fondly of a rare wine. Whatever pleasant memory it was entertaining, the robot’s temperament shifted quickly to concern. “Sibling Dex, have you been in the wilderness before?”

  “I’ve traveled between the villages.”

  “The highways are not the same as the wilderness, and the trip to Hart’s Brow will take … How far does that thing travel in a day?” Mosscap pointed again at the wagon.

  “I can go a hundred miles, give or take.”

  “So, that’s … sorry, I’m slow at math.”

  Dex frowned. “What?” How was the robot slow at math?

  “Hush, I can’t multiply and talk at the same time.” The whirring continued. “That’ll take you at least a week.” Mosscap fell silent. “I don’t know of any of your kind who have been in the wilderness that long and come back out. It’s very easy to get lost in here.”

  “I thought you said robots hadn’t had any contact with us.”

  “Not alive, no.”

  Dex looked back in the direction of the road. The black paving had been absorbed into the night. “Does that still lead all the way to Hart’s Brow?”

  “Yes,” Mosscap said slowly. “It’s been a while since I was out this way, but I think so.”

  “Well, then, I won’t leave the road. I wasn’t planning to, anyway.”

  The robot fidgeted in quiet agitation. “Sibling Dex, I feel that we’ve perhaps started on the wrong foot here, and I don’t quite know what I’ve done wrong, but if you’ll allow me to offer some advice … I think this is a bad idea.” Mosscap scratched its ruler-straight chin as it thought. “Hmm. A week there, a week back. That’s not so much time, and I have no schedule.”

  “What?”

  “I could come with you,” Mosscap said brightly. “I can get you to the hermitage safely, and on the way, you can tell me all I need to know about human customs. A fair exchange, wouldn’t you say?”

  In the grand scheme of things, it was fair, and probably wise, and certainly less taxing than the robot’s starting proposal. But no. No. This wasn’t what Dex wanted, or needed, or had ever remotely conceived of. This was weird, and confusing, and the opposite of being alone. They rubbed their forehead, looked to the stars, and sighed. “I … Look, I…”

  Mosscap leaned back, putting its palms up in a placative manner. “You need time to process. I understand.” It smiled. “I will wait.” It returned to its chair, folded its hands on its lap, and waited.

  Dex stood up without another word. Not knowing what else to do, they walked into their wagon and shut the door behind them. They needed quiet, a familiar space. They looked around their home. Plants and books and laundry. Same as yesterday. Same as always.

  They stole a peek out the window. Mosscap was still there, still sitting, still smiling.

  Dex jerked the curtain closed. This was ludicrous, top to bottom. A blink of an eye before, they’d been setting up camp, taking a shower, roasting some veggies, preparing for a much-needed sleep. Now … now, there was a robot, sitting by their fire, asking them if they could swap a crash course in a couple centuries of human culture for backcountry trail escort.

  Dex sat for a while. They stood. They sat. They stood. They paced.

  There was no way they were doing this. Obviously not. They were a fucking tea monk, not an academic or a scientist, or any of the myriad professions infinitely better suited to facilitating the first contact between humans and robots in two hundred years. Dex barely remembered what the Parting Promise was. They were the wrong person for this. That wasn’t selfish, they thought. That was fact.

  The pacing continued. They could give the robot directions to Hammerstrike. Dex had satellite signal, after all. They could message the town council and let them know Mosscap was coming, and someone qualified could take things from there. Yes. Dex nodded to themself. Yes, that would do. That would be their contribution, and they could read about whatever happened next in the news whenever they got back.

  Satisfied, they stood and opened the wagon door, confident in the answer they’d deliver. “Mosscap, I—”

  “Shh,” Mosscap said in a loud whisper. Its tone was equal parts warning and excitement. “Don’t startle it.”

  Dex looked to where Mosscap was pointing, and saw nothing but the blackness of a forest at night. “Don’t startle what?” Dex hissed back.

  Something shuffled in the dark. It shuffled loudly. Largely.

  Dex’s heart skipped. They looked to the robot again. Mosscap was frozen, alert, but made no motion to leave. Did robots run from danger? Did they know to? Did they need to? Dex wondered if they should get themself back inside, but before they could close the door, the source of the sound emerged.

  A huge bramble bear stepped out of the shadows and into the firelight, sniffing the ground with its fat, wet nose. It looked up, straight at Dex. Dex quickly swung their own gaze down, knowing that the last thing you want to do is look a bear in the eye (unless you wanted that to truly be the last thing you’d
ever do). Dex wanted nothing more in the world than to close the door, but they were too scared to move.

  The bear snorted in Dex’s direction, then ambled over to the fire. Mosscap, too, kept its head low, and it had shut off the lights in its eyes. The bear’s nose twitched until it found its quarry at last: Dex’s dinner plate. It scarfed the food down, taking its time to lick away every last burned morsel. Once there was nothing left, its nose drifted again toward the wagon, where butter and nuts and sweets lay waiting.

  Dex shut the door hard, nearly falling backward in their haste. The wagon, praise Chal, was bear-proof. This had been proven twice before, when Dex had come back from a tavern or guesthouse to find that an ursine visitor had knocked the vehicle over while trying to get at the snacks inside. Dex wasn’t worried about the wagon. They were worried about the fact that this time around, they were inside the wagon. The wagon might be immune to being tossed around. Dex was not.

  But incongruously with the ways of its kind, the bear left the wagon alone. It sniffed the plate again in false hope, then moseyed back into the woods, the brief intersection of their lives complete.

  Mosscap’s eyes flickered back on, and it looked to Dex’s window with utter glee. The robot’s elated words came muffled through the wagon wall. “Wasn’t that exciting?!”

  Dex slid down to the floor and locked their hands in their still-damp hair. They thought of the paint job outside, which Mosscap had been so interested in. They thought of the storage crate they leaned against now, filled with decorations for their pop-up shrine. They thought of the pectin-printed pendant resting as it always did against the hollow of their throat. Bears, all of it. Bears, bears, bears.

  Sibling Dex—dutiful disciple, traveling tea monk, lifelong student of the Sacred Six—leaned their head back against the box and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. They shut their eyes, and left them closed a few moments more.

  “Fuck,” they said.

  4

  AN OBJECT, AND AN ANIMAL