More objects gradually manifested in his vision of the morning: the piles of suitcases and other possessions the Jews had been forced to abandon when they disembarked, the clothes piled thirty feet high. He saw the train empty, all the thousands forced down the road, and hours later he saw no one. None of those people came back.
Heat blasted his face. He was beyond weary. He looked down at his hands, covered in blood and grime. He threw another small form into the oven: a precious doll. Well-nourished corpses were burned with emaciated ones—for economy of time and saving fuel. It required a great deal of trial and error to find the most efficient combination. If he focused on the mechanics, the science of his job, he didn’t have to think about what he was being made to do.
Several bots staggered their way up the ascension, the last road to the gas chamber, their shiny brain domes like shaved heads. They’d been here long enough to lose most of their fat, their flesh. They were like a cartoon of skeletons on their exhausted march, a silly jazz track playing in the background. Some of them disappeared then, having stepped off the edge of the roof.
Intruding into Danielbot’s awareness like something he’d intended to remember: the devil was on his way to Ubo. The God of Mayhem was busying himself setting fires in a frenzy of excitement. Hardly able to contain himself, he’d begun to see the possibility of bringing the whole world down in flames. The sky turned a smoky red. He could hardly wait to find a boat and make his way to Ubo, like Charon crossing the river Styx.
Their shiny metal bodies, their translucent plastic parts, melting, burning with a white heat until not just their minds but their faces were gone.
Gone up the chimney and filling the late afternoon sky: all the memories, all the faces, the voices, all those who had disappeared from the planet.
Danielbot folded himself up on the rooftop. All this had happened less than twenty years before Daniel was born. How was it possible? Perhaps it was only history, but history was, in the end, a very small place. It was a foul history the entire planet owned.
He thought he saw Gordon running through the field, his small, broken heart forgotten. He stood up and tried to follow him with his eyes. Then he saw the boy on the rooftop, poking at the dead bird. Then the boy stood up, and took the knife from Happy Jack, and began slashing his way through his mother’s womb.
A transparent train roared across the roof, its cattle cars loaded with masses of people standing, so close together they had to hold their arms over their heads, the sick and the babies underfoot, cooking in the heat and filth, unable to breathe. He glanced at the boy, whose gaze also was locked on the train. The boy looked at him and drew his finger across his neck.
“Lie down! All of you, hit the roof! Be still!” The guards were shouting, forcing the bots who were still on their feet to stretch out on the gravel. Danielbot hadn’t seen exactly what happened, but apparently several bots were accused of grabbing the guards’ electric rifles and they now lay in piles of smoking ruin. Again Danielbot wished he had the power to close his eyes, and settled for imagining himself lying in the darkness instead. Sometimes he cried but nothing came out, of course. The tears stayed there, invisible marks on his metal skin.
As he lay in the barracks, the dead and the dying all around him, stinking equally of filth and corrupted flesh, he knew that all normal fear had been driven completely out of him. He would attempt to stay alive, although death had lost its meaning. He was frequently in pain, but pain was what he expected. What he did fear were the Muselmänner, the soulless ones who ate very little, who reacted to nothing, doomed to selection, and yet still they walked, or shambled, most often at a snail’s pace, always in the way, always underfoot. Not that he feared the Muselmänner themselves—they were pitiful, the best they could do was annoy and enrage. He abused them, as did many others. If one of them fell he had no embarrassment about stepping on his back. There had once been one in front of the barracks for days—they’d used him as a stepping stone, their feet pushing him further into the mud until he was like some piece of pavement.
But to become a Muselmänner, to transform into one of those silent, subhuman creatures, that was a terrifying possibility.
The soldiers gave the Muselmänner the hardest work to do, even though they were the weakest—a pack of five of them pushing a wagon, rolling a barrel. They did it slowly, and some would fall over dead in the process, but that didn’t matter—they were supposed to die, this day or the next one. Often when they were beaten they appeared to feel no pain—they were a waste of brutality. Although sometimes they were good for a little cruel fun. You could make them do any shameful thing. A few managed to show them kindness—there were always a few saints around, giving up their own food, their own protection, for those who could not be saved. A waste of time, but they became like their pets.
Some said the Muselmänner were too empty to suffer—he didn’t know about that. But he had his own miseries to worry about. He needed to forget about them.
In the beginning the Muselmänner ate anything—they’d eat shoe leather if there was nothing else. Toward the end, however, many of them couldn’t eat anything, and yet they shuffled around without the strength to lift their feet. The weakest of the bunch had to bend down and use their hands to move their legs.
He sometimes spent a great deal of time trying to avoid them—they stank worse than anything he had ever encountered. Sometimes the other prisoners would push them out of the barracks so they had to sleep outside. He hated the way they got in the way all the time, the way they stared, the message they sent that all was lost.
It occurred to Danielbot that he himself hadn’t eaten in days—of course he didn’t need to. The so called protein paste had been largely for lubrication and conditioning purposes. What ill effects he might suffer without it, he had no idea. But the lack of power in the batteries—that was another—if he lost enough power a Muselmänn might be his fate.
He had never heard the term prisoner when everyone had been disguised and the guards had been roaches and unspeaking. They had called each other “residents.” Now everyone used the word “prisoner.”
Sometimes the punishments became an excuse to experiment with the bots’ physical limits. Once a bot was down guards would surround the figure and apply electrical charges to various parts and observe which areas caused the most visible distress.
Witnessing this, Danielbot tried to go back and find the holocaust survivor inside himself, the one who had gone through so much and come out the other side. A meaning had to be found.
A vision of the future sometimes helped you survive.
With his family present inside him, he could feel genuine joy for a few moments at a time.
Despite a universe of pain it was possible for spiritual life to deepen.
A LARGE NUMBER of guards left during the next few days. He didn’t see them go, but every morning when he woke up there were fewer of them. There also appeared to be fewer bots; Danielbot assumed they’d simply gone to the edge of the roof in the middle of the night and walked off. His own temptation to do so was outweighed by his need to see how the story ended.
The remaining guards no longer patrolled the roof perimeter. Perhaps they no longer had orders to prevent suicides. Perhaps it wasn’t even considered suicide. Can an appliance kill itself?
He thought it odd that he still had sleep cycles. He doubted he needed them, unless sleep promoted sanity even in an artificial intelligence, and he still very much believed he was capable of losing his mind.
He could not explain his mental processing outside the context of Daniel. The best explanation his available mental tools could come up with was that he was a kind of dream of Daniel, a kind of nightmare. Was he the dreamer, or was it someone else? The troubling thing was that he was troubled at all.
Among the remaining guards the abusive treatment of the prisoners increased. There was no disciplinary reason for the abuse—the bots did not resist. Falstaff tried once or twice to stop the abuse an
d was beaten down for his trouble.
His battery life was rapidly coming to an end, but he saw nothing he could do about that. And perhaps he shouldn’t bother, as he was a mere footnote in someone else’s life.
“You,” he said to Falstaff. “You came out of a womb. You had a family. You have a complete history. Your memories are your own and not someone else’s. You should leave here while you still can.”
“I’m going to hang on a bit longer. Who knows, maybe a helicopter will come and take us all out of here.” Falstaff avoided eye contact.
“They won’t take the bots, Falstaff. We’re simply excess equipment.”
“Falstaff?” He looked amused. “From Shakespeare?”
“When I first came here I didn’t want to become too attached to anyone. I’d lost... Daniel had lost, enough people. I gave each of you new names, arbitrary names. Bogart, Lenin, Gandhi, Falstaff. Daniel enjoyed Shakespeare, particularly the histories.”
“You’re far more than a recording. You came up with those names on your own. These new memories are yours alone.”
“The family was his. Gordon was his. If my only life is what I’ve experienced here, I’d rather not exist.
“Really, you should leave, John. Things will not end well here.”
“Then come with me.”
Danielbot could see the God of Mayhem wrapping his face in colorful rags, rising to his feet and spreading his arms. “No—look at us, think of what people would do to us. We would be less safe out among your kind.”
“If you change your mind, just come. I’ll find some way to help you. But before I leave—maybe there’s enough power for me to find out if Daniel ever got on that plane.”
“No. I don’t think so—leave it be. It isn’t always best to know.”
That afternoon Danielbot became aware of crowd activity near one end of the roof, bots gathered into a wall, obscuring something on the other side, a flash of fast-moving metal and a mewling sound, like that of a failing engine or an animal in extremis. Danielbot maneuvered through the figures until he could get a better look: a bot struggling frantically, a chain attached from its frame to a large rusty ring embedded in the roof. Another bot was slapping him on the head, kicking him, then dodging out of his grasp at the last moment.
The chained bot snapped its teeth and shookits head.“Henry?”
The werewolfbot stopped, stared at him, then started shaking its head again. Danielbot studied the one who had been taunting him—that bot took one glance at him, turned his back and disappeared into the crowd. The werewolfbot made a high-pitched screeching sound. The chain was attached just below the neck joint. The bot kept running in circles, the chain stretched tightly to the ring. With each revolution he came perilously close to the edge of the roof. If he went off the edge he would hang himself.
When the manic figure wasn’t running in circles it would stretch the chain as far as possible toward the crowd, supporting itself on its analogs of hands and knees, its segments and joints rigid with tension, its eye globes vibrating from the strain, and it would make a coughing, almost barking noise through its teeth, because it had clamped its jaw shut, as if it were trying to prevent the noise from coming out.
Danielbot approached within a few feet. “Henry? Do you recognize me?”
Again the bot twisted its head sideways in a dog-like movement. “Are you the king?” it asked. “Are you His Majesty?”
Danielbot thought a moment, then remembering, reached up and touched the cylinders attached to his skull. “These? It’s not a crown. I was in an... accident.”
“I’ve never had an accident,” the werewolfbot said, “but I have made some.” Its eyes wobbled sideways. “I know your face,” the bot said. “It’s like everyone’s face.”
“Are you trying to get free? I don’t think they—”
“No! I have to be sure the chain is strong enough to hold me! I don’t know who there is left to eat, but I would have to eat somebody! But can I eat them? I’m afraid they would break my teeth!”
The werewolfbot capered about then, snapping its jaws as if anxious for a ball. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The werewolfbot stopped and grew very still, staring with its eyes frozen in place. “I can still feel my fur,” he said. “But I can’t see it! It still itches and grows beneath my skin, but I have no skin. I deserve to be in Hell, but I had no idea it would be this bad!”
“You’re not in Hell. You’re in the future we’ve made for ourselves.”
“Are you a prophet? Jeanne d’Arc, that bitch, she was a prophet, among other things. Is it glorious being a prophet? Does it satisfy you? I crave such satisfaction, but it would seem I am far too itchy.”
“No. I’m a ma—. I am just like you.”
“A sorry end, isn’t it, to be like me? I only wanted to be admired, or at least remembered. I only wanted to be greater than myself—doesn’t every human being want to be greater than themselves? It’s the only thing which would made life tolerable, the only possible compensation for the grinding boredom of it all! You start out so full of promise, and yet you end up a corpse!”
“There are other ways to look at it, I think,” Danielbot said. The werewolfbot attempted to chew at its own parts with a rattling, metallic sound, and to howl, but the howl still came out muffled, which appeared to make the werewolfbot furious.
“I am the destroyer! I am the darkness at the end of time!” the werewolf screamed. “I am the slow corrupter, the rapid pestilence, the universal disassembler, the final stop on the journey! I am the madness without explanation! Love me and I will slaughter you! I will pick through your brains with my tongue!”
One of the guards pushed his way through the crowd of bots and aimed his electric rifle at the werewolfbot, who sniffed its barrel curiously, even though it lacked a nose. The guard pulled the trigger and held it as bolt after bolt wrapped the bot’s frame. The other bots scattered. The Danielbot shouted “No!”
When the guard finally loosened his grip on the trigger, the werewolfbot collapsed into a motionless pile.
“Why did you do that? He was chained!” the Danielbot cried.
The guard turned and looked the bot over. “It malfunctioned,” he said, and walked away.
Danielbot approached the werewolfbot’s collapsed form. He prodded it with his foot. Bearings turned and pieces pivoted on their pins as the lifeless parts rearranged themselves with the shifting gravity, then stopped.
He was walking back through the crowd when he saw a bot staring at him, and then attempting to hide in the debris. It was the one who had been taunting Henry, and—he realized—the boy without a name he’d met on the roof what seemed a lifetime ago. He walked over slowly, trying not to scare him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can come out now. I know you don’t recognize me, but we know each other. I met you on this roof a while back. You’d found a dead bird, remember?”
The bot came out. He looked no different than all the others, and they were all the same size. But he had the nameless boy’s voice. “I know,” the boy said. “I recognized you.”
“How’d you manage that—we all look the same.”
“I dunno.” There was no shrug to see, but Danielbot could hear it in his voice. “Maybe just because of the way you are. We’re all still different—at least I see differences.”
“Why’d you run?”
“Because of what I did, to that crazy one on the chain.”
“You tormented him. You were being cruel.”
“I was just having fun. He was just so crazy. I was just letting off some steam! Killing time! I’ve just got way too much time! I didn’t hurt him. That guard, he hurt him.”
It seemed pointless to be having this conversation. What do you talk about when it’s the end of the world? “So how are you doing?” he asked.
“How do you think? Look at what they done to me!” The boy’s voice rose. He stood up and spread his mechanical arms. “Look at me!”<
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Danielbot turned and left. The bots who had been watching this drama scattered, as if embarrassed. That left only Falstaff standing there.
Danielbot walked quickly to Falstaff and grasped his hand, covering it with both of his metal ones, trying not to squeeze too hard, as if it were a wounded bird he was trying to save. “Henry is dead!” He was upset, and whatever else this man was—imprisoner or torturer or protector—he had been a companion through part of this journey. “One of your—one of the guards killed him. And the boy tormented him! The boy was almost gleeful!”
“It’s adolescence. The boy holds onto our anger, and we hold onto the boy.”
“He follows me everywhere!”
Falstaff shook his hand vigorously, as if they were two old friends saying goodbye forever. “Our murderous companion. Our provocateur, our sidekick! A huge part of our problem, I think, is that the human race has largely failed to reach its adulthood.”
Danielbot could feel himself weeping, although he was aware that no actual tears were produced. “You’re saying goodbye. I won’t see you again. Be careful, my friend. God! Or the devil! I can see him in my head! The devil is on his way to Ubo!”
“I went down to the labs. I spent some time reconfiguring this bug in my head to your equipment.” He gestured toward Danielbot’s unwanted headgear. “Make yourself open to my signals. I’m going to rummage around below, see if I can take some of the electronic files with me. Maybe at some point someone can make better use of what we’ve done. Follow me if you can. At least maybe you’ll know what it’s like to escape this life.” Falstaff’s face began to break. “I’m so sorry.” He was weeping. “You were never supposed to know. This was never supposed to happen.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? Things that were never supposed to happen, they happen all the time.”
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