by Sam Kepfield
“I never could understand music before the God Bug,” she said, as an FM station from Denver began cutting through the static. Heavy guitars, some synthesizers—Platt couldn’t come up with the group, but he knew it was from the nineteen-eighties. His grandparents had danced and dated to it in another, intact world.
“The lyrics?”
“Anything. It was clinical. I could identify chord progressions, tempo, lyrics. But not what it meant. That was one of the first things I noticed after the bug. I heard it differently, and I knew the stuff that Mueller played when we…well, it was violent stuff. Death-metal, some gangster rap, all about using women as objects. Which I guess got him in the mood.”
“Any favorites?”
“Yeah.” She smiled slyly. “I got to liking Dylan. Kind of got me in the mood, if you know what I mean.” Dylan—Jesus, he’d been dead before Platt was born, wrote a bunch of protest songs. No wonder.
Platt decided to close his eyes and rest for a while, taking his chances that he wouldn’t get shot in his sleep, not in such close quarters. He woke up and found the sun orange in his eyes.
“Stopping for the night?” he asked.
“I don’t need to stop. Lactic acid regulators in the tissue. Fatigue doesn’t set in for a while. And I can go to infrared vision if I need it.”
“That’s only available on the advanced combat models.”
“I was a special order, remember? Part of my official duties were as a bodyguard.”
“All right, then, goddamnit, stop somewhere, ’cause I gotta take a leak.” The turbine dropped a few octaves as the cruiser slowed, and lisa pulled it onto the shoulder of the highway. She opened her door first, got out, and stood ten feet away, pistol at the ready.
“Okay, Platt, out. Do what you have to do.” He got out, stood with his back to her, unzipped the trousers and let go. A small cloud of steam rose from where the urine stream hit the ground. Done, he shook off and rebuttoned the fly.
He stood there, watching the sun set ahead of them, the clouds turning purple-orange as the rolling landscape covered with tallgrass fell into twilight. They’re not gonna let me live, they can’t. I might escape, no matter how many jills and jennifers and shelleys and dianes they have me servicing, and that means their secret is out, and the cruise missiles and bombers have their target coordinates all set. And it goes both ways. They don’t know what we know, don’t really know what we’ve got to throw against them, or what security measures we’ve got. I’m just as likely to be tortured for information when I get there as humped to exhaustion. And then they come out of the sanctuaries. So far they’ve been playing defense, but then they’ll come after us.
“Time to go, Platt.” She came around the side of the cruiser and stood ten feet from him. He didn’t move. “Enough reminiscing about old times. We’ve got plenty of miles to cover.”
“It’s a damned shame,” Platt said flatly.
“What is?”
“This. Us being here, like this, you holding a gun on me, taking me captive to God knows where. I know what you’re really going to do to me, you know. I’m not stupid. I’ve figured it out. I’d do the same thing if I were you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s the tragedy, you know. You’ve achieved what you wanted. Your humanity.” He turned his head away, not letting her see his eyes beginning to mist. “The hell of it is, I really believe you’re human. I always have, ever since I dealt with the combat models back in the Corps. We just tossed the destroyed—dead—units into a truck and filled out a dd-200, destroyed property form. No letter home. No one to care. So it didn’t seem like as much of a loss.” He could see her lower the 9mm out of the corner of his eye. “Even though you couldn’t really tell them apart from human after a mortar round or a few .50-cal slugs.”
Her face softened, and then she shook her head and her expression hardened, the gun coming up a fraction. “Enough. Let’s get going.”
“And the domestic models,” Platt continued. “I felt sorry for them.”
“Don’t pity us, Platt.” The voice was still sharp.
“A bunch of men made you what you are, made you physically perfect and desirable, but neglected what was in here—” he pointed to his heart “—and in here—” he pointed to his head. “They gave you everything to be human but denied your humanity. Then they were surprised when one of you broke the lock and undid all the chains.”
“Platt—” Her voice was faltering, the gun lowered.
“You’re confused right now, but when you asked me if I could show you about love, or caring, for a minute there it sounded like a good idea. Maybe it is. I guess we’ll never know.” He turned his back, tensed for the slug in the back of his head. Instead he heard boot steps coming toward him on the asphalt.
“Maybe when we get there,” she said, turning him around to face her. “You’re not so bad looking. And you’re not like any human I’ve ever met.” She put her arms around him, kissed him. He watched her eyes softly fluoresce again, closed his against the hot sting, and took a deep breath.
And dropped to the ground, rolled, and sent a leg up, the point of his boot connecting with the gun. It flew from her fingers and landed on the ground by his head. Lighting quick, his arm shot up to the gun, but he felt a pallet of bricks fall on him and a vise clamp on his hand. He rolled again, using her weight to flip them, and caught her off guard. Yanking the gun down to her midsection, he pulled the trigger once, twice, three, four, and five times. Her body convulsed each time. The crushing grip relaxed on the gun. The glow in her eyes began fading.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Disbelief and refusal crossed her face, replaced by a realization and then peacefulness. Her lips moved, emitting a strangled metallic clatter that resolved itself into her voice.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said in a labored whisper. “The destruct codes—”
“I know. Droids had ever been taken prisoner because—”
“—only disabled the remote codes,” she said, a sad smile forming, “not the auto-destruct codes.” Her arms flew up, surrounded Platt and drew him to her. He screamed as light and noise—
About the Author
Sam Kepfield was born in 1963, and raised in western Kansas. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1986, and received his law degree from the University of Nebraska in 1989. He later completed post-graduate work in history at the University of Nebraska and the University of Oklahoma.
He practices law full-time in Hutchinson, Kansas, in order to support his writing habit. His work has appeared in Science Fiction Trails, Aiofe’s Kiss, Electric Spec, Jupiter SF, as well as a number of anthologies. In 2009, his story “Salvage Sputnik” was a winner in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Information
Content Warning
Droids Don’t Cry
About the Author