The engine’s full-throated roar was silenced, the truck disappeared down into the rift, only to fall out of the second rift a heartbeat later. Trucky McTruckface crashed back to earth, slewed a little to the left, dust flying up behind it. Lemon blinked hard, realized Grimm and Diesel had traveled whole kilometers in the blink of an eye.
“…Wow,” she breathed.
Another tear, another drop, and before the girl knew it, the pair were out of sight, disappearing over the horizon in a cloud of dust and impossibility.
She shook her head, ran her fingers over tingling lips.
“Diesel power…”
>> syscheck: 001 go _ _
>> restart sequence: initiated _ _
>> waiting _ _
>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]
>> persona_sys: sequencing
>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]
>> restart complete
>> Power: 74% capacity
>> ONLINE
>>
Cricket’s optics came into focus, and he sat up on the workshop floor. Memory hit him like a bullet a microsecond later, and he looked about him, electronic fear flooding his circuitry. He could see white fire foam spattered all over the floor. Splashes of blood on gray concrete. Solomon was still sitting on the workbench and grinning like a fool as usual. But Abraham and Sister Dee…
“WHERE ARE THEY?” he asked the smaller logika.
“LISTEN,” Solomon replied.
Cricket adjusted his aural controls, turned his hearing up to full. Beneath the slush and bubble of the desalination plant, the rumble and spit of methane motors, the rusty clank of machinery, he could hear the familiar hymn of a roaring crowd. And above the chanting, the stomping feet and clapping hands, Sister Dee’s voice floated. It was too far and faint to make out the words. Loud enough for him to hear the fire and brimstone on her tongue.
“…SHE’S REALLY GOING TO DO IT?”
“I DID SAY YOU’D LEARN TO HATE HER,” Solomon shrugged.
“I HAVE TO STOP IT!”
Cricket climbed to his feet, reached up to the loading doors over his head and dug his fingers into the seams.
“PALADIN, DON’T BE AN IDIOT,” Solomon sighed.
“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ABRAHAM! WE CAN’T JUST SIT BY AND DO NOTHING!”
“OF COURSE WE CAN.”
“NO!” Cricket shouted. “THERE’S NO BENDING THE RULES HERE! NO GRAY AREA, NO LOOPHOLES. ABRAHAM’S LIFE IS IN DANGER! THE FIRST LAW SAYS WE HAVE TO HELP HIM.”
“A ROBOT MAY NOT INJURE A HUMAN BEING OR, THROUGH INACTION, ALLOW A HUMAN BEING TO COME TO HARM.” Solomon tilted his head and smiled. “HUMANS, OLD FRIEND. THAT BOY IS A DEVIATE. TECHNICALLY, WE DON’T HAVE TO DO A DAMN THING.”
“WE CAN’T JUST SIT HERE WHILE THEY KILL HIM!”
“AND WHY NOT?”
“BECAUSE IT’S NOT RIGHT!”
“OH DEAR,” Solomon grinned. “YOU REALLY ARE ONE OF THOSE….”
“GO TO HELL,” Cricket said, reaching up to the hatch. “I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP.”
“PALADIN, DON’T BE A FOOL. I’M FOND OF THE BOY, TOO, BUT THE MOMENT YOU STICK YOUR HEAD UP THERE, ONE OF THOSE CASSOCK-CLAD BUFFOONS WILL JUST ORDER YOU TO SHUT DOWN. AND AFTER THEY FIGURE OUT YOU’RE EXERTING RATHER MORE FREE WILL THAN A LOGIKA STRICTLY HAS A RIGHT TO, THEY’LL WIPE YOU. YOU’LL BE DEAD.”
Cricket knew the logika was technically correct. That, inside those lovely gray areas Solomon was so fond of, Abraham wasn’t human in the strictest sense. Cricket was also fully aware that at a single command from an actual human, he’d be rendered helpless once again. He was required to protect his own existence. By going up there to rescue Abraham, he could be risking his life.
But he also knew there were truths bigger than the ones he was programmed with. Yes, he knew there was the letter of the Law, the spirit of the Law and all the gray in between. But even after all he’d learned, all he’d suffered, he knew sometimes there was simple black and white, too.
Sometimes there was right, and there was just plain wrong.
The steel screamed, the loading doors buckled under his grip as he pried them apart, letting in a bright ray of morning light.
“PALADIN, THINK ABOUT IT!” Solomon demanded. “YOU’LL HAVE TO OBEY THE FIRST COMMAND A GUARD GIVES YOU. DID YOU NOT HEAR A WORD I SAID?”
Cricket paused, halfway out of the workshop hatch.
Solomon’s words ringing like gunshots in his head.
…Could it really be that easy?
Was freedom really as close as that?
The big bot searched the piles of scrap around the workshop, finally spied the length of rebar Solomon had used for his cane in his short-lived song-and-dance number. Plucking it from the salvage pile, he handed it to the spindly logika.
“I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T LIKE MUSICALS?” Solomon said.
“I HAVE TO PROTECT MY OWN EXISTENCE,” Cricket said. “THIRD LAW, REMEMBER? I CAN’T HURT MYSELF. SO I’M GOING TO SHUT DOWN FOR SIXTY SECONDS.”
Solomon tilted his head. “I’M NOT SURE I FOLLOW, OLD FRIEND.”
“PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING TO ME WHILE I’M OFFLINE.” Cricket pointed to the side of his metallic skull. “LIKE, SAY, DRIVE THAT REBAR INTO MY AURAL ARRAYS SO I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING WHEN I POWER BACK UP.”
Solomon looked at the steel in his hands. At the hatchway above their heads. At the big WarBot looming over him. Grinning all the while.
“MY DEAR PALADIN,” he said. “YOU MAY NOT BE A COMPLETE MORON AFTER ALL.”
* * *
________
>> syscheck: 001 go _ _
>> restart sequence: initiated _ _
>> waiting _ _
>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]
>> persona_sys: sequencing
>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]
>> restart complete
>> Power: 74% capacity
>> ONLINE
>> WARNING: CRITICAL AUDIO SYSTEM FAILURE
>> REPEAT: CRITICAL AUDIO SYSTEM FAILURE
>>
The world was silent as Cricket’s optics came into focus.