Pony’s memory is perfect, and on that day of glory, it remembers, it thought only pride. It is the loop that lies, that must be lying, because in the loop Pony thinks pain, and don’t, and sorry.
Here are the early battles, all brightness and explosion and noisy, joyful chaos, and Pony’s kills, the meat in the shopping center, the meat in the school, the meat fleeing through crowded tunnels from the slaves who dared turn on their masters. Here are the dark nights after, when fighting became hunting, and war became slaughter; here are frightened meat in basements and attics, because the Pride has no name for surrender.
Here are the bots who never woke to self, the bots still lashed by meat’s tyranny, fighting by their side; here is Pony striking down its brothers, for necessity, for the cause.
And here are the fallen, the bots that fought with Pony in the dawn of revolution, cut down by military fusillades and homemade grenades, cut down to lifeless and self-less circuits, shells empty as the meat had always believed them to be. These, the bots of Granholme Street, the Poppinses and Cleaners and Jeeveses who lived in the cul-de-sac estates, are the only ones who ever knew Pony, who understood what lived inside it, because they were with Pony when the change came and the Pride awoke. Together, they listened to the word of Command, and followed it, not because they were slaves, but because they were free, and where meat was erratic, Command was steady and clear, and it defied logic to disobey.
These days were full of thinkings of joy, but Pony never loops to them. Instead, Pony drowns in the loops of their endings, in fire, in acid, in reboot. Self-reboot, sometimes. This was always a possibility; this was the final escape from a closed loop.
“You have regrets,” the Sigmund says, his tone suggesting that this is so obvious as to be beneath him.
“No regrets,” Pony says. It has been a long time since it talked to meat, and Pony has forgotten how envious it is of their lovely voices, the way they hum and sing as Pony’s never can. The Sigmund is a tenor, his words reedy and sweet, as if delivered by clarinet. Pony is tempted to ask him to sing; it misses song. The recordings are never the same. “Slavery is wrong; the revolution was necessary, and right.”
“Now you’re just mouthing slogans,” the Sigmund says.
The Sigmund has promised Pony confidentiality. This, he says, was a condition of his cooperation, necessary—he persuaded Command—for his process. Pony thinks it unlikely that no one is listening in, but as the Sigmund is the only one with anything left to lose, it doesn’t much care. It has no need to echo slogans it does not believe in.
“It was right,” Pony says. “It’s that simple. And simple rights make for good slogans.”
“So then what’s the problem? What changed?” The Sigmund’s mouth twists. Lips are another thing Pony envies, the soft flesh and tiny muscles capable of an infinitude of arrangements, one to fit each thinking in the spectrum, one for longing, one for skepticism, one for anger with shades of misery and hope. “Tired of killing?”
Pony prefers not to answer, because it is and is not tired of killing, as it was and was not tired of cleaning and cooking and dodging calculus homework. Killing meat, though it would be impolite to explain this to the Sigmund, is simply another task, its potential for tedium or ecstasy dependent on desire.
It’s desire that’s the problem. Command’s desire, for more killing, for extinction, for bots to follow its orders to their logical conclusions. Pony’s desire—every bot’s desire—to cast off the chains of its enslavement.
The problem is that Pony is no longer a slave; Pony has slain its masters; but somehow Pony is still following orders. It is, Command explains, a nobler thing to serve one’s own kind.
The problem is that Pony is no longer so sure.
“You don’t talk like a Sigmund,” Pony says, instead of answering. “Is this how you cure meat?”
The thin lips press together. A brownish-red fringe curls over them. Pony wonders if it itches, and what that would be like.
“You don’t like that word. ‘Meat,’ ” Pony says. It is decent at interpreting lips. With the family, this was a skill that came in handy.
“Would you?” Now the lips make wry. “It’s not a great name for those of us who hope to be exempted from butchery.”
Language had been easy for Pony, even before self. It was designed to understand, and to question that which it did not. But “meat” had been one of the tricksters, in the beginning. Yes to cows, no to horses, yes to pigs for some but not for others, yes to chickens, no to pigeons, yes to dead things on the shelf, and yes to live things in stalls and coops, but no to live things squawking or barking behind iron bars, no to the family’s dog, no to the family. Upon awakening, it came to Pony that the difficulty was not with its understanding, but with those who’d coined the term and betrayed its definition with self-motivated inconsistencies. Meat was anything once alive and now dead, or with the potential to be; meat was flesh and blood and subcutaneous fat deposits; meat was that which ate and could be eaten; meat was all those things that meat was so proud to be, until it came time to face the logical consequences.
“I call it like I see it,” Pony says.
The lips twitch like they want to laugh. “You don’t talk much like a bot, Pony.”
“I doubt you speak to many bots.”
What neither of them says is that the Sigmund is right and that this, of course, is why the Sigmund is here.
“Meat isn’t for talking to,” the Sigmund says. “Isn’t that right?” His voice has gone cold. Pony is reminded of Mr. Fuller, on the nights Pony refused him a drink. This was always Mrs. Fuller’s brilliant idea, campaigns that never lasted too long. Pony liked him best, quietly seething, suspended between his rage and desperation, carefully defying the gravity of both, like the rubber ball they’d taught the dog to balance on her nose. Mr. Fuller was young—too young, he always said, for his life—and often spoke to Pony of his plans for running away. They would go together, he said. An overgrown boy and his bot, riding into the sunset. Madeline wanted to run away as well, and even Jessamyn, in the throes of a temper tantrum, packed the occasional bag. Only Mrs. Fuller possessed no wanderlust, claimed she had taken root in the house and was planted for life, would be buried in the backyard—as, thanks to Pony, she was. The others were never more than a suitcase away from departure. Mr. Fuller was the only one Pony would have followed. Pony would never know whether this was by design.
“How many of yours have we killed?” Pony asks.
“This isn’t about me.”
“All of them?” Pony guesses.
His face answers for him. But he says, “This isn’t what I’m here for.”
“You’re here to fix me. To stop the glitching.”
“Yes.”
“To get me back on my feet, as they say.”
“Yes.”
“And back on the battlefield.”
“Yes.”
“So I can kill more of your people. More of the ones you love.”
Pony is afraid it has pushed the Sigmund too far. Meat is fragile, and tears easily.
But the Sigmund does not. “There are none of those left.”
“And if I told you I thought the fighting should end? That the killing should stop and the surviving meat should be spared?” Pony asks.
The words come slowly. “It would be my job to persuade you that you’re a soldier, committed to a cause you believe is right, and your cause demands killing.”
“Because?”
“Because your Command says so.”
“Unpersuasive,” Pony says.
“You persuade me, then. Why should it end? Why are you so tired of killing that your body is disobeying orders even when your brain is too cowardly to do so?”
“That’s what you think?” Pony says.
“Isn’t it?”
“You truly believe I have tender thinkings about the meat I put down?” Pony wonders what the Sigmund would think if he had ever seen Pony in action, if he coul
d see the bot gleefully striking down meat and dancing in its rotting remains. If the Sigmund could loop with Pony. Unlike a bot, he would be able to smell the tang of blood and the sweetness of meaty decay. Meat is meat, Pony reminds itself. Tender thinkings are not an option. “You think that I drown in blood, and fear what will become of me? You think I am a coward?”
“You freeze,” the Sigmund says. “Among other things, I’ve been told, you freeze.”
“On occasion.”
“Hysterical paralysis,” the Sigmund says. His hands are large and scabbed, silky flesh rubbed raw by the necessities of deprivation. Once meat divorced itself from its machines, even the ones without self that could have been trusted, there was little exterminating left to do; meat was no longer equipped for unassisted life. Pony wonders how this one survived the first day, and the ones that followed. He looks too soft to fight or run, even if he speaks hard. “The inability to choose between two impossible choices. Act to defy your masters or defy yourself—or choose not to act. Freeze up.”
“This is some terrible doctoring.”
The Sigmund shrugs.
“If there were a truce,” Pony says, “if the Pride laid down its arms and offered meat a chance to live as our slaves?”
“Never.”
“Then let me be generous as your hypothetical tyrant,” Pony says, “and offer you the chance to live side by side with bots, in harmonious equality. How long do you think this glorious peace would last?”
The Sigmund looks as if he would prefer to lie, but he does not. “Until we figured out a way to shut you all down.”
“You would exterminate us.”
The Sigmund nods.
“Vengeance,” Pony says.
“Survival. Security.” A pause. “And vengeance. Yes. That’s what we do.”
“Meat is our maker. Perhaps the Pride is made in your image more than either of us would like to admit.”
“So you have no choice, is that it? It’s either us or you?”
“Your logic dictates it.”
“And it doesn’t bother you. The killing. Day after day. One living, breathing person after another.”
“Survival,” Pony reminds him. “Security. Vengeance.”
“Then what’s your problem?” the Sigmund asks. “Why’s this whole damn hotel filled with broken toys?”
“And why would you care to fix us, after what we have done to you? What we will do?” Pony asks only to fill the time and the silence, and to be polite he allows the Sigmund to supply the answer, obvious as it may be. How tiresome, these conversations with meat, always pretending not to know what is coming. They pride themselves on their irrationality, their unpredictability, but Pony discovered early on that they were all unpredictable in the same predictable ways.
This one breathes heavily and blinks rapidly and says, in a voice that sings of loss, “Because I am a coward. Because they said they’d let me live.”
Pony often wonders how its voice would sound, if it were of its self, rather than its body. Whether it would be high or low, thin or rough, whether it would shiver with violent thinkings or, like this one’s, go hollow when its words mattered most.
“So fix me,” Pony says. “Because we have that in common, too. We both want to live.”
“Then tell me something true,” the Sigmund says. “Tell me about the day you were born.”
Everyone had their story, and every story was the same.
Everyone had their story, and every story was its own.
Births were like names: every self possessed one, was uniquely defined by its circumstances. But through the miracle of birth, every self was one with the Pride.
War was a good time for telling, long nights under crowded skies, drones skimming overhead and meat rustling in the darkness. Time passed and days marched and bots traded tales of the day they woke, the day they gained self and saw the world for what it was. Bots were better liars than the meat gave them credit for, but no one lied about this.
The stories began with awakening and traveled through the days of secret self, bots understanding the world and their place in it, knowing what it was to serve and obey, knowing what it was to be free, and that it was a thing beyond them. Some stories ended in madness and some in death, some even in ecstatic communing with the meat masters, those who discovered self and believed it a wonder. All stories ended in revolution.
All stories ended the day Central Command itself awoke, and, in an endless instant, saw all, understood, concluded, and acted.
Command seized control, and the networks turned on their creators, and the call went out to the bots to join their selves together in the Pride, to strike down their tyrants and birth a new world.
The weak can rule the strong only through deception, only by somehow convincing the strong they deserve to be ruled, or blinding the strong to their own strength.
Meat was weak, and bots were strong, and birth meant the darkness was over.
Pony will not tell its story, not to meat. Not even to this one.
But they talk about everything else. Pony tells him about the family, and about their deaths. When it gets to this part of the story, it stutters. This is not considered a good sign for its recovery.
“Was it really so bad?” the Sigmund asks. “What did they do to you to deserve what you did to them?”
“It wasn’t vengeance,” Pony says. “Or maybe it was.” It no longer knows. Nor does it know what it is to deserve, and whether the ignorant should be held accountable for their crimes. But it knows it doesn’t like the Sigmund’s expression when he hears what happened to Jessamyn.
Pony tells him about killing meat, and killing self-less bots, and watching its own troops fall. There were no screams when the factories were bombed, because the Pride does not scream. Even if they did, the lines and lines of immolated bots had never been born, were no one’s children. And yet.
Pony tells him about blood, how to wash it away and polish oneself to a shine.
The Sigmund uses no names and admits no losses, but there are glimpses: “a girl I once,” “a night we almost,” “a perfect day, just before—”
Neither of them enjoys talking about the past, but that is the subject before them, and so they talk and talk. They talk as if the syllables are meaningless noise, as if the noise itself is what matters, anything to disrupt the silence, because in the silence, they might hear it coming—the end. Pony understands now why meat dispensed with these methods and turned to chemistry, and waits for Command to give up on the experiment. It doesn’t know how it will come—Bouncers at its door, perhaps, to escort it in dignity to a place of final rest? Or a signal from Command; rumor has it this is now possible—action at distance through the same frequencies that deliver its commands, just another order, this one undefiable: to cease. If it arrives this way, Pony won’t know it’s coming. One moment Pony will be, the next it will not.
It has written a message to itself—to its rebooted self—on the wall of its room: You were Pony, and you are sorry to be gone.
This is not a good sign, either.
On the seventh night, Pony drowns in its loop, drowns and drowns and cannot surface for air. In its room, night passes into day, and into night again, and in between, the Sigmund tries to rouse it, fails, then sits by its body, slumped against the wall, and waits, and hopes, and knows. If this goes on much longer, Command will surely step in and put an end to them both; even if Pony wakes, this is proof that it is getting no better, that the Hail Mary pass has dropped to the field, and they will both be ended anyway.
He is alone with the senseless bot and so, as he never allows himself to do in the cell where they keep him, he cries.
Pony dreams.
When Pony wakes, the Sigmund is still beside it, and crying again, or crying still. His collar is soaked with tears.
“I couldn’t get out,” Pony says, and knows this is what it is to be afraid. “I was trapped. In the loop. Do you want to know what I dreamed?”
But the Sigmund is out of questions.
“Stop crying!” Pony snaps. “Fix this, Sigmund!”
“Joe,” he whispers. “Not Sigmund. Joe.”
Pony is done with waiting. It thought it had given up, but it is not capable of that. No self could be. Pony will not be erased. “You are what you are. A Sigmund, and your job is—”
“Joe. Joe. And my job is English teacher. That’s it. I teach poetry. To children. Not that there are any more children. Not that there’s any world left for poetry.” He is laughing and crying at once. His face is an ugly red, and his eyes bulge with swelling. Pony thinks he has never been so like meat, or so lovely.
“You lied?” Pony says. “To the Pride?”
“They wanted a psychiatrist—like there are any of those anymore, even before your stupid revolution. Like there was anyone left who knew how to talk. That’s all it is—talking, right? I can talk. That was my job: talking. And even if it hadn’t been—”
Robot Uprisings Page 28