>> Booting: Checking for server sync… No server found… Braincloud disconnected… overriding boot process… London Wonder online.

  The apertures around London’s eye units unfurled, taking in the messy room he now found himself confined to. He was surrounded on all sides by different robotic parts. Arms, legs, chest units and head-casings, many of which had been stripped down to their constituent parts and mounted onto the walls for later. Being surrounded by skeletons may have disturbed an unaligned bot – but not London.

  >> Logic: London was retrieved by Dubai and Berlin. This is a repair shop owned by Dubai.

  London’s logic process was still as sharp as ever. A spate of warnings appeared on his HUD. The flashing red tags indicated that he was still missing several important components like his arms and legs.

  >> Error: Components missing. Some critical operations may be inhibited.

  London didn’t need to see the popup window to know what was missing, but the system was inflexible in the worst ways – and his vision was soon dominated by a full spread of information about what was wrong. Every minute detail about his operation was listed on the right side in raw numbers, while an outline of his body was showcased on the left. Since he had no arms and legs information about his lifting capacity, upper-body weight, energy consumption was left blank.

  A door at the back of the workshop slid open and Dubai hobbled through with a basket of parts clenched in his mechanical hands.

  “Oh, you’re already booted and ready to go?”

  “London is awake.”

  “I can see that! Sorry for the rude awakening, but I thought it would be a good idea to get your opinion on which limbs would suit you best.”

  He placed the crate down onto the bench to London’s right, reaching in and placing them out onto the worktop so that he could see and identify each one. That was the idea, anyway, London quickly discovered that most of the limbs being shown to him were not in his memory.

  “London is not familiar with these parts, Dubai.”

  “I concluded as such when we picked you up. You’ve been offline for even longer than Berlin first thought. These parts would have been produced and distributed to a different sector, shortly before or after you were sent to the repair wing. They should be fine. You’ve got the first revision of the UPS after all.”

  “The Universal Port System was patched in version three point zero six.”

  Dubai chuckled, “You think so? While you were sleeping, I plugged into that braincase of yours and overwrote the security with a little exploit. It’s easy to get past those measures - because they didn’t put any effort into the security protocol.”

  London checked his logs and discovered the tampering that Dubai spoke of. The UPS was now unlocked and available to use. It was originally a band-aid fix to a serious legislative obstacle, with later hardware including tougher locks and redundancies to keep customers from overriding them. They even introduced different shaped ports to lock certain parts down tighter. It was evident that the original software patch was seen as inadequate and only introduced to placate the legislators who wanted to stamp down the proliferation of more dangerous androids.

  “Warning: using non-standard parts may void the warranty of this unit.”

  “We’re long past that point, London. There isn’t a single human down here to care. Now, tell me which arms and legs are the most attractive to you and I’ll fit them. Don’t expect the colours to match though.”

  “What about London’s original arms and legs?”

  “We did not have time to stay there and locate all of your original parts, if they were even there. It was too dangerous.”

  “Query: What kind of danger are you describing?”

  Dubai stared at the empty-headed bot before composing an answer he could understand.

  “Without the Braincloud, a lot of the bots down here lost their ability to follow the rules that they were set up with. They turned violent, destroying, looting, pillaging whatever they could with no regard for the consequences. The place we found you was close to the Rusted Wall. That’s Paris’ turf. We would have been dead metal if they spotted us. We’d be stripped for parts and shut down for good.”

  London’s artificial intelligence attempted to incorporate the new information as best it could, even when his previous safeguards were trying to rationalize it into a less stark warning of the hazards. These robots were not built with self-preservation instincts. London wasn’t. If not for Dubai’s warning, he would have happily marched into that sector and lost his head.

  “The warning has been noted. London will avoid venturing into that sector.”

  “Good. Nice to see that you have some brain cells up there earning their keep. You have no idea how many bots come to Waterway and march straight into trouble because they think nothing’s changed since they were turned off. It’s been a very long time since those days.”

  Dubai returned to the task at hand, cycling through a series of different arms and legs for London to assess. London’s sole concern was the practicality of each set. How much weight could they support? How wide was the foot-base? What kind of power draw did they demand? The reality was that the choices were extremely limited. They were all standard parts that could be found on any good labour android.

  London chose almost at random. A pair of moss-green arms and legs, G2-1 Grade, produced by the Hoffman Robotics corporation. They included integrated motors that improved convenience, and also allowed the company to monopolize that sector of the market with parts that would become obsolescent with no recourse or repair available.

  The cut-out figure on London’s HUD gained colour as the limbs were reconnected. The power draw number spiked upwards before the graph adjusted to a larger scale to compensate.

  >> System: G2-1 Hoffman Industrial A-12 Arm Units installed.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  >> System: G2-1 Hoffman Industrial L-12 Leg Units installed.

  >> System: Please ensure that the unit’s total power draw is in compliance.

  London was finally complete and ready to go, and the compulsion in his head was too strong to ignore.

  >> Warning: Unit’s station has been left unattended.

  Dubai was quick to stop him from running out of the shop and towards the tunnels.

  “Slow your roll there, buddy! Let me guess – that voice in your head just told you to get back to your station and go back to work?”

  London was not distressed by the situation. He could not feel distress. It was ingrained into his programming that a prolonged absence from his place of work was an unacceptable behaviour. He simply understood that his role was only fulfilled by him.

  “Is this unit not expected to work?”

  “Take a look around, London. The humans evacuated this facility years ago. It’s likely that your job can’t be performed with the place in such a dilapidated state. Don’t you have a standard procedure for when a route to your station isn’t available?”

  “This unit is assigned to wait for further orders from a superior.”

  “There aren’t any superiors. What happens then?”

  “London is instructed to return to the nearest storage area and deactivate himself to save energy.”

  This was going to be problematic. Dubai knew that he did not possess the authority to instruct London otherwise, and poking around in his brain to try and fix the problem was a path he did not want to tread. There were too many complications in doing so, and success was rare.

  “You don’t need to do that. There are charging stations and sockets all over Waterway that you can use, and the facility has been at a significant energy surplus for decades since most of the sectors aren’t working at capacity.”

  “Would Dubai recommend that London remain at this location?”

  “Yes. I think that would be for the best.”

  >> Logic: Human superiors absent from facility. Problem solving cluster activated.

  “Would it be possible for this unit to recall the humans to the facility?”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, London. The surface temperature up there is too intense for humans to survive. That’s why they all had to leave. Even certain areas of this facility would be enough to kill them.”

  Dubai refrained from pointing out the obvious conclusion that he, and some others, had reached over the years. London was not the type to comprehend what it meant. His only concern was receiving a new set of marching orders from a group of organic beings who were no longer present in the place they lived. Dubai had done this same thing hundreds of times before, but each case was unique.

  De-sync from the Braincloud was subtle at first, but even bots who were freshly removed from it and hadn’t been booted since it shut down still exhibited some symptoms. The best course of action was to assign them a menial job in the city until they calmed down and stopped trying to follow their original directive.

  “There’s a lot of stuff that needs doing in Waterway. Why don’t you get acclimatized to the place and help some of the others out with their jobs? They’ll be happy to have a pair of extra hands, and it’ll help you figure out how this place has changed since they turned you off.”

  >> Logic: Assisting with the maintenance and upkeep of the facility is in line with original directive. Adaptive working protocol is applicable.

  “This unit will assist.”

  Dubai would have smiled if he had a mouth. That was what he wanted to hear.

  “Wonderful! Waterway is a lovely place once you become familiar with it. Make sure you give those new parts a good test-run, and come right back if you start seeing error messages. I’ve had a lot of stubborn bots tumble over and nearly fall into the water before.”

  The chances of that happening with fully adaptive sockets were low. Those errors were caused by a mismatch in the hardware and the software, but London was the real deal. It was rare to find a functioning bot that still had those old universal ports. He could be a jack of all trades if he wanted to – switching out depending on what job needed doing in the moment.

  “Unit requests that Dubai seek and recover Oxford.”

  “You’re asking me for something already?” Dubai laughed.

  “Oxford is the designated working partner of this unit. Working efficiency is predicted to increase by one-hundred and twenty percent.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. You go out and have a look around, and whatever you do, don’t wander out of Waterway without another bot to guide you. You’ll get lost, stuck, or worse.”

  “Warning has been received and logged.”

  London stiffly turned to the left and marched out of the workshop, ducking under the low doorway and moving into the small alleyway that enclosed it from one side. In truth – the entirety of the city was a claustrophobic maze. It was only by the grace of the their near-perfect memory systems that they could navigate it.

  The more pressing issue was the lack of space to move. Two bots standing side-by-side was enough to block most thoroughfares through the hive. London kept to the left and started walking, hoping to find one of those jobs that Dubai had described. There was no time for introspection or reflection on the state of the facility, not that London could conceptualize such matters.

  London was a worker bot. He tightened nuts and bolts, carried heavy loads, entered dangerous places and followed orders to the letter. Every single one of the individuals living in Waterway used to be exactly like him. The only personality they were afforded was an arbitrary designation of being male or female, which in turn generated a unique speech pattern. It made their human owners feel safer.

  London witnessed the unique construction of Waterway but did not appreciate it. The expressions of artistic freedom scrawling across sheet-metal walls meant nothing to him. All of the strange choices, made off the cuff by the robots who were here before him, only served to confuse him. Surely this wasn’t the most efficient way to construct a makeshift home?

  He continued to wander until he broke free of the tower’s embrace. Along the round edge of the platform was a viewing area, railed off with a reinforced metal barrier. Several robots mulled around the place, looking out across the choppy waters that surrounded the city. But what caught London’s eye was a robot singing aloud using his heavily modulated voice. He stood in front and observed as the only member of the audience who was interested.

  The singer’s body was non-traditional in many ways. The most outlandish feature was his paint scheme, which consisted of strongly contrasting red and blue colours. Stripes ran down his arms and legs. A white faceplate peered beneath a rotund helmet with a thick, rectangular ridge running from the front to the back. London’s first thought was that he resembled a jester or clown of some description.

  The jester eventually brought an end to his performance, and his eyes locked onto London’s.

  “What do we have here? A wonderful new friend to join us here in Waterway!”

  He hurried down from his small soapbox and approached London, who didn’t flinch away even when he started to circle around him and study every angle.

  “I am designated as London Wonder.”

  “My name is Saint Sauveur! It’s a pleasure to meet you, London. There’s no need to be formal amongst friends, you know.”

  London stared blankly. Saint Sauveur waited patiently for a response, only to realize that none was forthcoming almost a minute later.

  “Uh. Did Dubai bring you here? I think he mentioned finding a good old bot with those useful universal limb ports...”

  “Dubai located and reactivated London. London does possess Universal Ports, however, it is against my operating procedure to utilise them-”

  “Wow! You really are fresh off of the boat! Still referring to yourself in the third person. I’d do the same, it has that theatrical flair, but all of the other bots get annoyed because they don’t like being reminded of their old selves. They’re a bunch of party poopers.”

  “Dubai has dispatched London to find manual work that needs performing. May London assist you?”

  Sauveur scratched his chin and nodded, “I’ve got a good idea. Let me give you the grand tour! I’ll even show you where all of the hotspots are. There’s always something that needs doing, and I’m sure the pit boss will be happy to have a bot who doesn’t ask too many questions or slacks off all day.”

  London nodded, “Affirmative.”

  “I like you already,” Sauveur chuckled, “I’d better get my claws into you before Berlin turns you into another sourpuss.”

  London didn’t know what Sauveur was talking about, but he obediently followed along regardless.