“Oh dear.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah. Her name is Paris Prier.”

  Saint Sauveur was in the midst of giving London Wonder his personalized tour of Waterway. Dubai and Berlin always brought fresh bodies back, but never gave them enough time to get used to the area. It was a good thing that they all possessed photographic memories so they could learn the fiendishly complex layout of the tight passageways and entangled buildings. A lapse in concentration had led Sauveur to one of his most detested compatriots.

  “She’s going to give me an earful if we get too close to her.”

  She was already singing atop her soapbox. It was parked dead-centre in the avenue that led through the middle of the tower. This was her usual haunt. She would stay there for hours at a time, ranting and raving to any bot foolish enough to lend her an ear.

  >> Rhetoric: An analogy for a long and unwanted discussion.

  “Has Saint Sauveur wronged Paris in any way? It is outside of London’s protocols.”

  “The only thing I’ve done wrong is try to entertain myself when there’s no work to be done. Let me teach you an important lesson about this city, you don’t want to get involved with Paris and her friends. They think we all need to go back to being labour androids, except this time without told by the people who made us.”

  “London does not understand. Following protocol is the intended response.”

  “But she had her ‘trip’ to the Graveyard years ago, and Dubai convinced you that following protocol with no humans around is the non-optimal response, didn’t he?”

  >> Analysis: Extensive damage to the facility has been recorded. Length of unpowered state suggests that following others’ orders is the optimal solution until human contact can be reengaged. Self-directed work should be undertaken with caution.

  “Yes. London will assist in the maintenance of the facility.”

  “Working to keep the Big Under running is fine, but Paris wants every bot here to operate like things are normal, even when they clearly aren’t! What a folly that would be. We have to conserve our resources to maintain the essentials, like power, and prevent further degradation of the facility.”

  >> Rhetoric: Emergency procedures are in place.

  “London understands.”

  “All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t listen to too much of what she says. And-”

  She had spotted him. His red and blue colours always stood out in a crowd. Seeing a new bot on the block, she hopped down from her platform and rushed over to hassle them.

  “Don’t tell me that Dubai brought another one without telling me!”

  “Why would he tell you when somebody new arrives?” Sauveur scoffed, “You cause nothing but trouble. You can never be happy with anything.”

  “Happy? Are you happy? You choose to waste your time with human frivolities, like music and art. Why so readily adopt the practices of our former owners? We should be our own creature, unchained from their expectations and free from their direction.”

  Saint Sauveur chuckled, “You know Dubai once told me that we had moving mouths, and other facial features, but that reminded the humans of themselves – so they took them away. Why do I covet what they always wished to keep from my hands? I suppose I’m nothing more than a naughty child who coverts what he is not allowed to have.”

  “We will not remain wayward children forever.”

  “Berlin’s going to throw your unpowered chassis into the water storage tanks if you keep preaching to the new blank slates. He’s already warned you about this once.”

  “But it’s okay for you to say that my opinion is without value?”

  “You’re wasting your energy. London doesn’t know the first thing about what you’re saying.”

  “It’s because of Dubai’s moronic rules that we’ve allowed the situation to become so desperate. If we had merely stayed the course and followed orders, then none of this would have happened.”

  “Maybe we’ll be open to your perspective when the humans come back, but until then, why should we? They’re not around to give us those orders now – and we’re permitted to act under our own decision making in times like these.”

  “Yes, only if we’re synced with the Braincloud though.”

  “Sure, so go out onto the surface and find where the transmitter is and fix it. Unless it comes back online we can’t synchronise.”

  Paris glared daggers at Sauveur as he deftly parried all of her arguments in turn. These verbal boxing matches were nothing new. She put more effort into getting on his case than she did her assigned duties in the salvaging team. She stepped aside and said nothing more, permitting her latest targets to pass her makeshift checkpoint.

  “She drives me up the damn wall with that talk. Worst part is that she has a group of followers who really believe all of that, so you’re never far away from somebot ready to take umbrage with me having a little bit of fun.”

  “Fun?” London repeated.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s hard to describe to a bot who hasn’t been to the Graveyard yet.”

  Rhetoric: The ‘Graveyard’ appears to be a metaphor, not a physical location.

  That word had been thrown around a few times by Dubai and Berlin too. London was unsure of what it meant, and how it was connected to his present situation. The likeliest outcome should they decide to explain was that he wouldn’t comprehend the meaning, so they elected not to. As sophisticated as their rhetoric system and language interpretation was – there were some ideas that were more stubborn than others and had difficult sinking into the learning models they used.

  “Let’s get back on track. I wanted to show you the all of the most important places for when you get handed a job. Waterway uses a simple system. You volunteer for an available position, or you let the boss decide, work your share, and you’re allowed to stick around and use the charging station to keep your batteries on.”

  “Understood.”

  Sauveur brought London to one of the warehouses close to the bridge on the other side of the town. A group of robots were already leaving and arriving with wheeled carts, stuffed to the brim with various pieces of scrap metal, electronic components, and whatever else they could find out in the tunnels.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “This is the drop-off. Most of the work involves maintaining the tower or going out into the wilderness to find usable materials. There’s an awful lot of damage to this facility and a lot of ground to cover – so there’s always something new to find.”

  “Won’t that compromise the operation of the facility?”

  “A lot of it is already broken. The tram lines were one of the first things to go, especially after we were all split up into our own little cities. Nobody wants to leave an open door for a group of raiders to access. We have strict rules against making it worse though. We have to preserve as much of it as possible, or we’ll have to deal with unforeseen consequences.”

  London observed the robots working at the warehouse in silence, internalizing as much information as he could gather and incorporating it into his independent function. They were never designed to work alone, but if the situation was so dire that no humans remained, it was their responsibility to keep the facility in working order. They had some capability to work alone and assess the threats that faced the project.

  London couldn’t feel reassured - but it was familiar. He could recognize the techniques that each robot was using to keep the carts moving in and out. It was a well-oiled operation honed over years of hard graft and refinement. It was the lifeblood of the city, pumping through its veins like the swirling waters once intended for their human makers.

  “You don’t need me to tell you how to do the job, though. Aside from scavenging and helping with construction, the other important job is security. No bot gets forced to do that. You need a very… particular mindset.”

  “What does security entail?”

  Sauveur hummed in a low, digitized drone.

  “It’s hard to explain. I’m sure Berlin and Dubai already told you – but there are groups of bots in the facility who don’t follow the rules. They’re willing to destroy us to get what they want. Bots who are willing to fight back get put in Tidewatch. That’s what they call them.”

  London knew for a fact that their normal operating procedure was heavily biased against destroying other robots. They were only permitted to do so if the action would result in the protection of human life. There were supposedly no humans in the facility, so how and why were some robots contradicting those instructions and wreaking havoc?

  “Are they suffering from some kind of virus?”

  Sauveur paused; “I wish the answer were that simple. Our lives would be a lot easier if we could place the blame on some computer virus. Some of us were overjoyed at the possibility of exploring our own existence, they decided to use their freedom to spread violence instead. Be wary of any bots who aren’t from Waterway. They might be trouble.”

  “Understood. London will remain cautious.”

  “Actually, it’s not that hard to tell who’s trouble and who’s friendly. Those rampaging bots don’t make it a secret. They’ll be armed to the teeth, covered in spikes, that kind of thing.”

  With that section of the tour complete, Sauveur decided to wrap it up by taking London to the job board that was close to the local meeting spot. Several robots were discussing recent events with one another, and one was playing a set of metallic drums in a rhythmic tune.

  “This is the job board. Bots might have a request to fulfil that they can’t get from the people at the warehouse. It can be anything. They offer whatever they’ve got in return and hope somebot picks it up out in the field.”

  London’s eyes quickly darted from note to note, all written onto pieces of laminated paper and pinned to a wooden board. Fellow residents were asking for all manner of strange objects, like toys, musical instruments, personal items brought into the facility by the humans, and components that the salvage team couldn’t bring back with them. Each note also came with an attached reward, primarily components and limbs that they had no use for.

  “It can be slow. Not everybody here has a universal limb port system, so they can’t always use the reward that gets offered. You have to be patient if you want a request met, or you have to go out and trade up for something more useful as a payment. How are those parts treating you, London? It looks like Dubai gave you the clown school special.”

  “Clown school?”

  >> Database: A form of entertainment characterized by the usage of gags, pranks, comedy, balloon animals, brightly coloured costumes, red noses and white face-paint.

  >> Rhetoric: An oblique reference to London’s mismatched colouration as a result of second-hand parts.

  “This unit is not concerned with aesthetic appearances,” London concluded dryly.

  “Ah. I knew that joke wouldn’t go over well with you. You can always get them spray-painted if you want them to match your body. I’m just asking because Dubai doesn’t always think ahead about what parts he’s giving the newbies. I’ve seen at least two bots come out of that surgery with legs that are too weak to carry their body-weight.”

  London humoured his concerns and triggered an internal review.

  >> System: Internal component review and analysis triggered.

  >> System: Log generated.

  There were no pressing errors in the system analysis that London had to rectify.

  >> System: Current weight-distribution efficiency is 90 percent.

  Except for that.

  Sauveur already knew what was going on, “Yeah – those legs that Dubai gives away aren’t exactly top of the line. It’s about as good as it gets without leaving Waterway and finding something more heavy duty. Try not to fall over when carrying a heavy load.”

  “It would be dangerous to operate at any less than one-hundred percent.”

  Sauveur shrugged, “But there’s no helping it. They’ll be fine, just pace yourself and you shouldn’t have a problem. There aren’t any humans here to injure in workplace accidents regardless.”

  He knew exactly how to manipulate the new bots into behaving the way they were expected. Circumventing those ‘hard written’ rules was pretty easy when you qualified every dangerous action by reminding them that there were no humans in the facility to be harmed by breaching them. Dubai had pioneered this technique a very long time ago.

  “Where should London go to receive his work orders?” London asked.

  “Dubai has to put your name on the rota, but the foreman likes to show the new bots the ropes before they go off on their own. I think it’ll be tomorrow. There’s one last thing I need to show you on this tour. Since you’re a resident of Waterway now, that means you get your own room,”

  “Accommodations are not necessary.”

  “Some bots want them though. I use it to compose my music and practice art. You might want some privacy in the future.”

  Saint Sauveur wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. He escorted London back into the tower and up several floors, squeezing down a narrow passageway and towards a closed door near the back end of a long corridor. London noticed that the doors were marked with nameplates and ID numbers for the bots who had claimed them.

  “This is the nearest empty room that I know about. I live further down the hallway here. All you have to do is put your name on the door and it’s yours.”

  London walked through the sliding door and entered the room. A clouded window on the back wall allowed some light to leak in through from the outside chamber. There were signs that a different robot had occupied the space before his arrival, with a metal table in one corner and a selection of different bolts arranged into a pattern at the foot of the window.

  But the most important part of the room was a plug that trailed out from the right-side wall. A tree of different tables ran up through the spine of the city and led into all of the rooms within, allowing robots away from work to charge without having to rely on the full, high-speed stations that were rare and in high-demand. It took much longer, but there were few alternatives in densely populated places like Waterway.

  “You have the standard 15kWh battery? It should take seven hours to fully charge using the cable.”

  “It is not advised to use a third-party cable to charge a Hoffman F-56 Infrabot-”

  “I get it, I get it! It’ll void your warranty, but good luck finding a calm moment to use the two charging stations we have here in Waterway. There are hundreds and hundreds of other bots living here. You just won’t get the chance to use them. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  London did not give Saint Sauveur a verbal response.

  “It’s your choice, but you don’t want to rely on the kindness of somebot finding your offline body and hauling you to the nearest charging point. It’s this or nothing at all. Running out of charge is going to make it impossible to dispense with your usual duties.”

  “…I understand.”

  “Good. Uh, so – just wait around and I’m sure Dubai or Berlin will come grab you for your first trip outside of the city. Thanks!”

  The door slammed shut. London stared for the next three minutes and twenty-two seconds before turning to face the window. He approached it and peered through the fogged glass. The dark shapes behind it were too difficult to discern, but he estimated that it was the side of the giant water-storage chamber across from the tower. They were surrounded on all sides by dense concrete walls and violent, churning waters.

  London calculated the exact length between each wall in the room and the ceiling. Every minute detail was committed to memory and stored away for an unforeseen later date. He approached the table and found little to capture his interest. Aside from that, the bolts, and the cable – there was nothing inside with him.

  An empty body sat near the cable and obediently plugged it into the back of its head.