Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (17 page)

“What do you want to do?” he asked her.

She looked up at him, and he froze. Her face had changed. The last bits of sanity had shredded, and she wore a mask of wild fear and rage. It could have been the light of the moon playing across her face, but Cavalo didn’t think so. “You could come with us,” she said.

“Where?”

“Away. Away from all this.”

He was still five yards away. “Where would we go?”

She looked down at Jamie, and he took another step. “Far,” she said. She brushed a lock of her son’s hair from his forehead. He kissed her hand. “You know.”

“Don’t,” Cavalo said. “Please.”

“You didn’t listen,” she said.

“I’m listening now!”

“No, you’re not. You’re still not listening. You don’t listen. You
never listen
!”

Jamie looked startled at his mother’s sudden scream.

“Anything you want,” Cavalo said.

“Stop,” she growled at him. “One more step and it’s over.”

Cavalo heard the unmistakable click. It sounded like thunder. His wife turned their son in her lap so that he was facing Cavalo. The boy waved as his mother raised a pistol Cavalo had kept hidden. She placed the barrel at the back of her son’s head. “Hold this,” she said to Jamie. She handed him a small object with her other hand. “You have to hold it tight, okay, sweetheart? Hold the metal pin tight. Don’t let go until Mommy says.”

“Okay,” Jamie said solemnly, looking down at his prize. Even at a distance, Cavalo could see what his son held. He didn’t know how his wife had gotten ahold of a grenade. They were scarce.

“Oh please,” Cavalo croaked. “Please don’t do this.”

“It’s better this way,” she said. “There will be no more tears. We won’t be scared. We’ll go together, and we’ll be free.”

“You’ll be damned.”

“Maybe. Maybe we already are. Don’t you see? Maybe we’re already dead and this is hell.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “It doesn’t matter.”

Cavalo raised the rifle and aimed it at his wife’s head.

“You do it, there will be a reflex,” she said. “My finger will spasm when your bullet enters my brain, and then Jamie will be gone.”

“Ah,” Cavalo said as he gagged. “Ah. Ah.”

His wife smiled. “It’s better this way.” She looked down at her son’s head and pushed the gun against the base of his skull. “It’s time to end this. Good-bye, my love. It’s—”

Cavalo fired. It echoed across the dark desert.

His wife fell back. Her gun did not fire.

It took him seconds, minutes, hours, days, and possibly even months and years to realize his son had clasped both hands to his ears to block out the echo from the gunfire. His empty hands.

Cavalo ran toward Jamie. His son looked up at him with a frown on his face and said, “Daddy.”

The explosion was bright and all consuming. It flung Cavalo back, burning his skin. His leg broke when he landed. His head rapped against the ground, and everything was white, everything flashed, everything was stars and done and over and would never be the same again—

“HE’S SEIZING!” the robotic voice exclaimed. “HE’S GOING INTO CARDIAC ARREST. MOVE, SAVAGE! OUT OF MY BLASTED WAY! HE’S CRASHING. LOGIC FAIL. LOGIC FAIL. THE SQUARE ROOT OF SANITY IS THE MICROCOSM OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.
GET OUT OF MY WAY!
”

SIRS
, Cavalo thought as he choked on his tongue.
Just let me go.

His world exploded again when electricity coursed through his body.

He was back out in the snow. A blizzard unlike anything he’d ever seen.

Two doors stood before him, covered in bees.

He waved his hand over the first. The bees swirled around him. The wood of the first door was so white and serene it almost glowed. He read:

Stick figures drawn underneath. Three of them. A man, woman, and a child. All holding hands.

He moved to the second, and the bees swarmed with a shake of his hand. This door was black and gnarled, the wood splintered and rough. He read:

A black mask dripped down.

He stepped back.

He knew which one he should go through. It was obvious. It was easy.

He reached out and touched the figures on the white door. He was filled with a peace like he hadn’t felt in years. He could float away on it, like a calm river on a hot day. It was everything he could have asked for, everything he didn’t even
know
he was asking for. It was the answer to all his problems, and the world would be as it was and as it should be.

It felt like a trap.

He stepped away from the white door. And stepped in front of the black.

He reached out and touched the mask. It came away sticky against his fingers. Unpleasant. Grimy. Dark. Like it was blasphemy. Like it was sin. The fire that ignited in his belly was hot and greasy. He knew that mask. He knew the eyes it hid. What they had done. What they were capable of. Cavalo knew that fire was all consuming.

But it burned honest.

He gave one final look at the white door and all it held, and as the bees screamed at him, as the blizzard roared with all its might, he grabbed the broken handle of the black door and opened it wide, and it was
fire
and it was
death
and it was
suffering
and it was
—

the sanity of robots

THE MAN
named Cavalo opened his eyes. A thin metal man stared down at him.

“Ow,” Cavalo said, though it didn’t hurt as bad as he expected. He hoped it would at least garner some sympathy and help him avoid the scolding he knew was coming.

“Ow,” the robot said. “
Ow
, he moans.
Ow
, he whines. Yes,
ow
, you dumb meat sack.
Ow
is what happens when you allow yourself to be shot.” The robot stood up straight, the whirs and clicks of his coils and springs grinding and wheezing. He was a tall thing, just under seven feet, and a dull silver that was flecked with rust. His eyes were two bright orange bulbs hidden behind plastic sheaths that looked like eyeglasses. The CPU in his chest pulsed quietly like a heartbeat. Up near his right shoulder was a worn legend stamped into the metal:

Sentient Integrated Response System

SIRS. The robot who managed the prison and security in the Before. The robot who had lost his robotic mind at some point After. He was already insane by the time Cavalo had stumbled upon the NICI during an epic thunderstorm in the spring years before. Cavalo still didn’t quite understand how robots could lose their minds, but SIRS had assured him quite casually (of course, this being after the robot had tried to murder him in a most ferocious manner) that not only was it possible, it was fundamentally probable. “Much like humanity,” he’d said, “robotics is not forever.”

Now, though, it didn’t seem like he was going to avoid getting chewed out. Cavalo groaned, more for theatrics than actual pain, when SIRS pulled back the bandage on Cavalo’s chest with his spindly fingers, inspecting the wound.

“The infection is receding,” SIRS said. Cavalo had also thought robots were not capable of sarcasm. He was wrong on that account as well. “You’re lucky I didn’t just let it spread and allow you to die. It would have been what you deserved.”

“It’s not like I meant to get shot,” Cavalo muttered. His throat was scratchy, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth.

SIRS pressed against the skin around the bullet wound. Cavalo hissed. “Oh, calm down, you little child,” the robot said. “I am trained in all manner of medical and surgical emergencies. I am a Class-F200 model after all, not some Class-A200.”

“I don’t know even what a Class-A200 is,” Cavalo said.

“Pieces of ostentatious garbage,” SIRS assured him. “You are better off with me.” He stood and inspected an IV line that dripped a clear solution into Cavalo’s arm. His face, aside from his eyes, was vaguely and disconcertingly human. He had no ears or hair, but there was a shaped protuberance that could have been called a nose. His mouth was a grated slot that did not move. A vocal processor gave him voice, which could at times affect different accents, even if they all sounded mechanical. SIRS had told him it was due to the deterioration of his central computer. Cavalo thought he just liked speaking in accents.

“How long?” he asked as the robot pressed a cool glass of water to his lips. Cavalo drank.

“Since you’ve returned?”

He nodded.

“Six days.” The glass was pulled away.

“Shit.” They were in the main barracks, one of the few buildings left standing at the prison. Most of the others were long gone, blown up or blown away, Cavalo didn’t know. SIRS couldn’t say either, even though he’d survived somehow. He said that some of the files from his life Before or during the End were corrupted and he could no longer access them, little pockets of memory gone as if they’d never been at all. Cavalo didn’t know if robots could lie but figured if they could go insane, then it wasn’t too far of a stretch. SIRS had also made brief mention of others who’d come to the prison before Cavalo but wouldn’t say any more. Cavalo had never found any sign of previous inhabitants. No one else had tried to come here since he’d made it his home.

“Shit is right,” SIRS said. “You almost died.” Something clicked inside his head, and his voice went flat as his eyes darkened. “Seven. Twelve. Thirty-two. Everything here is seven twelve thirty-two. See how it folds into the vastness of space.” He fell silent. There was a beep from deep inside the robot and his eyes lit up again. “It was touch and go for a while,” he said as if he hadn’t been interrupted.

Cavalo was used to these moments, these tics and twitches that the robot claimed were part of his insanity, his corrosion. He’d asked once if there was a way to fix SIRS, to reverse the insanity. Remarkably, the robot had laughed, a thing that had only happened a handful of times since. “Only if you know where to find another nuclear core,” the robot had said. He must have picked up Cavalo’s increased heart rhythm and subtle intake of breath with his biometric sensors upon hearing the word “nuclear.” Cavalo only knew that meant bombs. SIRS had assured him that the core was intact and that it would be a millennia before it became an issue. “And by then,” the robot had said a tad too gleefully, “you’ll be nothing but bones and dust.”

“Bones and dust,” Cavalo said as he tried to sit up. There was a sharp twinge in his chest, and it became harder to breathe. His limbs felt weak, and his vision swam in front of him.

“Not yet,” SIRS said, pressing down against his shoulders. Cavalo had seen SIRS crush solid steel in his hands, so he didn’t try and resist. “You need more rest.”

“Jesus,” Cavalo gasped. “That hurts.”

“I expect it would, though, since I’ve never been shot, I can’t say for sure.” He moved to the wall and touched a white panel, one of dozens around the buildings that still stood. It lit up under SIRS’s fingers, and the robot’s eyes glowed briefly.

SIRS and his software were integrated into the entire compound, and he could access any part of the prison through the panels. He’d been designed as security against the prisoners at the NICI, which held those that committed extreme violence. It was supposed to help cut down the risk and exposure to the guards that patrolled in Before, but since SIRS couldn’t remember much about that time, Cavalo didn’t know if it’d worked. He wondered many things about this robot, but questions were only met with more questions, and after a time, the answers seemed less important.