A Psalm for the Wild-Built

by Becky Chambers

  Coming face-to-face with a robot was one thing, as was having the robot offer to travel with you, as was (eventually) agreeing to said offer. It was another thing entirely to know what to talk about.

  If Mosscap had any concept of awkward silence, it did not seem to mind. It kept pace easily with the ox-bike, walking alongside with tireless speed as Dex continued the hard climb up the old road. Dex had slept better than they’d anticipated—exhaustion trumped bewilderment, it turned out—but starting the morning ride with already-sore calves was mildly miserable. Dex looked up the daunting path ahead of them, which seemed to grow steeper and wilder with every push of the pedals. Dex had thought themself a good cyclist, but this was a far cry from the highways.

  “I could help, you know,” Mosscap said. “I don’t know if we’d go much faster, but it’d be easier on you, at least.”

  “Help how?” Dex said through heavy breath.

  “I could push. Or pull, depending on—”

  “Absolutely not,” Dex said.

  The robot fell silent, the finality in Dex’s voice preventing any further discussion. Mosscap shrugged and continued its brisk march, looking with apparent happiness at the forest canopy around them. A chatterbird alighted on a nearby branch, singing its famous staccato song. Mosscap smiled and returned the call, mimicking the sound in near perfection.

  Dex looked askance at the robot as they pedaled. “That’s creepily good,” they said.

  “Two Foxes taught me,” Mosscap said.

  Dex wrinkled their nose in confusion. “Two foxes taught you to— Is that another robot?”

  “Yes. Two Foxes is an expert in bird behavior. It loves nothing better than listening to vocalizations.”

  Dex took note of Mosscap’s phrasing. “So, it is correct, then? You wouldn’t prefer they or—”

  “Oh, no, no, no. Those sorts of words are for people. Robots are not people. We’re machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its.”

  “I’d say you’re more than just an object,” Dex said.

  The robot looked a touch offended. “I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.” It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. “We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”

  Dex had never thought about it like that. “You’re right,” they said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. This is an exchange, remember? These things will happen.”

  Another silence filled the air; Dex tossed out another question to break it. “How many of you are there?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mosscap said breezily. “A few thousand, I think.”

  “A few thousand, you think?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Do you know how many people there are on Panga?”

  “I mean … roughly. Not exactly.”

  “Well, then, same here. A few thousand, I think.”

  Dex frowned as they gently swerved past a pothole. “I figured you’d keep track of that.”

  Mosscap laughed. “It’s very hard to keep track of robots. We get so caught up in things. Fire Nettle, for example. It walked up a mountain one day and we didn’t see it again for six years. I thought it had broken down, but no, it was watching a sapling grow from seed. Oh, and there’s Black Marbled Frostfrog. It’s something of a legend. It’s been holed up in a cave, watching stalagmites form for three and a half decades, and plans to do nothing else. A lot of robots do things like that. Not all of us want the company of others, and none of us keep schedules that humans would find comfortable. So, there’s no easy way to know how many of us there are, down to the last.”

  “I would’ve thought you could all … I don’t know, hear each other,” Dex said. “Ping back, or something.”

  Mosscap turned its head slowly. “You don’t think we’re networked, do you?”

  “Well, I don’t know! Are you?”

  “Gods around, no! Ugh! Can you imagine?” The robot’s face was angular in its disgust. “Would you want everybody else’s thoughts in your head? Would you want even one other person’s thoughts in your head?”

  “No, but—”

  “No, of course not. Even if our hardware allowed for that—which it assuredly does not—I can’t see how that’d do anything but make us completely unhinged. Gggh. That’s horrific, Sibling Dex.”

  Dex thought and thought. “So, those of you who do want company, how do you know where to meet? Are there villages, or…”

  “No. We have no need for food or rest or shelter, so settlements serve us no purpose. What we do have are meeting places. Glades, mountaintops, that kind of thing.”

  “How do you know when to meet?”

  “Every two hundred days.”

  “Every two hundred days. That’s it.”

  “Should it be more complicated than that?”

  “I guess not. What do you do, when you meet?”

  “We talk. We share.” Mosscap shrugged. “What does any social being do when they meet?”

  “Okay, so you chat, and then … go off on your own. To watch stalagmites, or whatever.”

  “We’re not all that single-minded or that solitary. Some like to travel in groups. I was part of a trio for a while. Me and Milton’s Millipede and Pollen Cloud. We had wonderful conversations together.”

  “What happened?”

  “Milton’s Millipede became distinctly interested in fish spawning, and I was uninterested in observing that particular event in depth, so we parted ways.”

  “No hard feelings?”

  Mosscap looked surprised. “Why would there be?”

  Dex’s head was already starting to hurt. “So, then … if there are no settlements, and you just meet in random places—”

  “They’re not random.”

  “In varied places, then, and you’re not networked, and you can’t communicate long-distance— Right? You can’t?”

  “We can’t.”

  “Then how did the robots choose you to leave the wilderness? That couldn’t have been a unanimous decision.”

  “Well, no. Black Marbled Frostfrog doesn’t leave its cave, remember.” Mosscap smiled cheekily at this. “Sorry, I’ll be serious: we had a large gathering at Meteor Lake where we sorted it out.”

  “How’d you know to go there?”

  “Oh! The caches. Of course, you don’t know about the caches.”

  “What are the caches?”

  “Weatherproof boxes we leave written messages in. We have fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and thirty-six of them.”

  “Wait, wait. You don’t know how many robots there are, but you know that you have fifty-two thousand…”

  “… nine hundred and thirty-six communications caches, yes. I can sense their locations.”

  “How?”

  “It’s very old technology, back from before our Awakening. The factories contained supply containers. Toolboxes, raw materials, and so on. We repurposed the idea for our own use, after we left.” Mosscap tapped its forehead. “The caches give off a signal, and I can pick it up. We, ah, borrow some of the functionality of your communication satellites for that.” It put a finger to its motionless mouth. “Don’t tell.”

  “Nobody’s noticed?”

  “Not to brag, but we’re much better at masking our digital fingerprints than you are at finding them.”

  “Yeah, I guess you would be. Okay, so: you leave notes for each other.”

  “Yes. It’s common practice to check any cache that you’re in close proximity to, just to see what’s up. Robots started spreading the word about a large meeting on the spring equinox, and there were enough of us there to have a proper discussion about whether it was time to see what you all were up to.”

  “And how did you get picked to be the lone representative?”

  “I was the first to volunteer.”

  Dex blinked. “That was it?”

  “That was it.”

  Dex chewed on this
for a while as Mosscap continued cooing at birds. “You are nothing like I expected,” Dex said at last. “I mean, I didn’t expect to meet any of you ever, but…” They shook their head. “I wouldn’t have pictured you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re so … flexible. Fluid. You don’t even know how many of you there are, or where you are. You just go with the flow. I figured you’d be all numbers and logic. Structured. Strict, y’know?”

  Mosscap looked amused. “What a curious notion.”

  “Is it? Like you said, you’re a machine.”

  “And?”

  “And machines only work because of numbers and logic.”

  “That’s how we function, not how we perceive.” The robot thought hard about this. “Have you ever watched ants?”

  “I mean … sure. Probably not like you have.”

  Mosscap chuckled, acknowledging this to be so. “Many small creatures have wonderful intelligences. Very different from yours or mine, of course, but just wonderful. Sophisticated, in their own way. If you watch a nest of ants for a while, you’ll see them react to all sorts of stimuli. Food, threats, obstacles. They make choices. Decisions. It’s incredibly logical—strict, as you say. Food good, other ants bad. But can an ant perceive beauty? Does an ant reflect on being an ant? Unlikely, but maybe. We can’t rule it out. Let’s assume, though, for the sake of this conversation, that it does not. Let’s assume that ants lack that particular flavor of neural complexity. In that respect, it seems to me that creatures with less complicated intelligences than humans are more in line with how you’d expect a machine to behave. Your brain—the human brain—started out as a food good, other apes bad mechanism. You still have those root functions, deep down in there. But you are so much more than that. To distill you down to what you grew out of would be like…” It searched for an example. “Stop the bike, if you would.”

  Dex stopped the bike. The wagon groaned but obeyed.

  Mosscap drew their attention to the mural on the wagon. “How would you describe this painting?”

  Dex didn’t like feeling as though they’d just walked into a pop quiz, but they obliged. “Happy,” they said. “Cheerful. Welcoming.”

  “That’s one way to describe it. Could you not also describe it as pigment and lacquer smeared onto wood? Is that not what it is?”

  “I guess. But that—” Dex shut their eyes for a moment. Ah. “That misses the point. That’s thinking about it backwards. Missing the forest for the trees.”

  “Precisely. It ignores the greater meaning born out of the combination of those things.” Mosscap touched their metal torso, smiling with pride. “I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components. You don’t perceive the way an ant does any more than I perceive like a … I don’t know. A vacuum cleaner. Do you still have vacuum cleaners?”

  “Sure.” Dex paused, remembering a museum exhibit from their youth. “Manual ones, anyway. We don’t do robotics anymore.”

  “Because of…” Mosscap gestured at itself.

  “Yeah. We don’t know why you happened, so we don’t want to mess with it.”

  “Hmm. I would’ve thought people would have studied the Awakening in our absence.”

  “I’m sure someone somewhere does, but it’s hard to study something that isn’t there to be studied. And trying to make more of you is an ethical mess. There’s just some things in the universe that are better left un-fucked-with.” Dex got the bike going again, taking a moment to focus on nothing more complicated than the simple rotation of gears. “I still think you’d be better off with a disciple of Samafar,” they said. “You could bend each other’s heads until you both collapse.”

  Mosscap laughed. “And maybe I will seek one of them out, after this. But for now…” The robot looked around the sunny forest with contentment. “I think I’m where I should be.”

  Dex’s calves labored against gravity, Trikilli’s ever-constant pull. Gods around, but it was difficult getting back up to speed on an incline, even with the ox-bike’s help. “So, if Two Foxes is into bird calls, what about you? What’s your thing?”

  “Insects!” Mosscap cried. Its voice was jubilant, as if it had spent every second prior waiting for Dex to broach the topic. “Oh, I love them so much. And arachnids, too. All invertebrates, really. Although I do also love mammals. And birds. Amphibians are also very good, as are fungi and mold and—” It paused, catching itself. “You see, this is my problem. Most of my kind have a focus—not as sharply focused as Two Foxes or Black Marbled Rockfrog, necessarily, but they have an area of expertise, at least. Whereas I … I like everything. Everything is interesting. I know about a lot of things, but only a little in each regard.” Mosscap’s posture changed at this. They hunched a bit, lowered their gaze. “It’s not a very studious way to be.”

  “I can think of a bunch of monks who’d disagree with you on that,” Dex said. “You study Bosh’s domain, it sounds like. In a very big, top-down kind of way. You’re a generalist. That’s a focus.”

  Mosscap’s eyes widened. “Thank you, Sibling Dex,” it said after a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Dex angled their head to give Mosscap a nod of you’re welcome, then stared at what they saw. “You’ve got a worm crawling through your, uh, neck parts.”

  “It’s a velvet leafworm, and yes, I know. It came up my arm after I brushed against a bush. It’s fine.”

  Dex watched with growing trepidation as the leafworm crept up and up, exploring with its long antennae, eventually slithering into the dark gap that led into Mosscap’s head. “Uh, Mosscap? It’s—”

  “Yes. It’s fine.”

  5

  REMNANTS

  The thing about crumbling roads was that some of the crumbled spots had edges, and some of those edges were sharp. The wagon had been built for plenty of wear and tear, but there was only so much it could do against four days’ worth of jagged concrete. This was how Dex found themself digging through the wagon’s storage cubbies in a panic, trying to find the roll of patch tape that might—might—stop the freshwater tank from purging itself through the hole torn by the uncaring road.

  “You might want to hurry,” called Mosscap from outside.

  “I’m fucking hurrying,” Dex yelled, throwing their stuff this way and that. Gods around, where was the damn tape?

  “I mean, it could be worse,” Mosscap replied in a chipper tone. “It could’ve been the greywater tank.”

  Dex ignored the robot in favor of their rising hackles. They found scissors (no), soap (no), worn socks they thought they’d recycled (no), plant food (no no no), and then, blessedly—yes!—the tape.

  Dex darted back to the puddle in the road, which had grown distressingly larger in a mere minute or two. Mosscap was kneeling on the ground beside the ruptured tank, metal hands pressed against the hole, stemming the tide with middling success. Dex ripped off a length of the heavy cellulose strip and slid themself into the puddle. A gush of water drenched them both as Mosscap removed its hands from the tank, but Dex quickly got to patching.

  Mosscap watched Dex work. “Might it go faster if I tear while you stick?”

  Dex bristled at the idea of Mosscap’s help, but as the water poured steadily over their arms, they saw little choice. “Fine,” they said, tossing Mosscap the roll.

  Mosscap pulled out a length of tape and, with immense concentration, tore the strip free. “Ha!” it said, remembering after a second to actually hand the strip over. “Oh, that’s quite satisfying, isn’t it?” It tore another strip, and another, and another, hastening with enthusiasm.

  “I’m so glad you’re enjoying this,” Dex grumbled. The puddle had soaked through their pants, and they could feel their underwear begin to cling to their skin. But with Mosscap’s assistance, the patching went swiftly, and soon, the water held fast behind the bandage. What little remained o
f the water, anyway. Dex looked in despair at the precious liquid creeping ever farther out on the road, impossible to re-collect.

  “It’s all right, Sibling Dex,” Mosscap said.

  “How is this all right?” Dex asked. “I need— Wait, are you okay?” They looked with concern at the robot—the metal, circuit-filled robot dripping wet beside them.

  “Oh, yes, I’m completely waterproof,” Mosscap said. “Couldn’t visit lake rays if I wasn’t, could I?”

  Dex could only guess at what that meant, but they were too preoccupied to chase that particular thread. They looked back at the water gauge on the side of the tank. Only about a third of their supply was left, and everything in the greywater tank had already been filtered back. Dex moaned in frustration. They could keep themselves hydrated with that amount, but not much else.

  “How do you refill it?” Mosscap asked.

  “Stick a hose in it at a village.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat in silence, Dex brooding as Mosscap watched a pine weasel leap from a nearby branch. “Well, then,” Mosscap said brightly. Moving with purpose, it lay down on the soaked asphalt, getting a good look under the wagon. “Ah! This is quite simple,” it said.

  “What is?” Dex asked.

  “Just a moment.” Mosscap began fussing with something. Before Dex fully registered what was going on, there was a clank, a rustle, and a thud.

  “What are you—”

  Mosscap stood, hefting the now-detached tank over its shoulder with one arm. The water sloshed noisily. “There’s a creek not far from here,” it said. “We can fill this, pour it into the greywater system, and you’ll be good to go.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Dex said, getting to their feet. “Stop. Put that down.” Part of them marveled at Mosscap’s strength, but that awestruck feeling made them all the more determined to get the robot to stop.

  Mosscap put the tank down, looking perplexed. “What is it?”

  “I can’t—” Dex ran their hand through their hair. “I can’t let you do this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—because I need to do it.”

  Mosscap looked from the half-full water tank to Dex’s body. “I don’t think you can.”