I Heart Robot (13 page)

“Sweetheart.” Mom reaches for me, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Mommy, Erik … ” But I can’t speak; there aren’t any words.

“It’ll be okay, Tyri. I promise.” Mom kisses my face, wincing at my attempt to hug her.

“Sorry.” Seeing my mom in pain is sobering, and I mop up tears with my sleeve. “You should get some rest.”

Mom nods, her eyes already closing. She looks so frail and brittle wrapped in the daisy yellow blanket with her HealGel encased head resting on voluminous pillows. I have to be the strong one even though there’s an ache where my heart used to be.

“She could’ve been killed too,” I whisper.

“I know.” Rurik pulls me into another a hug, his shirt soaked with my tears. “But she’s going to be fine. Everything is going to be okay.”

We stand like that for a long time, long enough for my tears to dry up. What does crying achieve anyway? It’s not like they’ll bring Erik back. Forcing my fingers to uncurl, I push away from Rurik and sniff. “Will you stay with me?”

“Like you have to ask.” He kisses my nose. “Let me make a quick phone call, okay?”

I swallow and nod. He gives me a parting kiss and brushes a final tear from my cheek before slipping out of the room with moby in hand. I ease myself onto the bed and curl up next to Mom, resting my head against her shoulder and folding her arm around my waist.

Her heartbeat is a bird in a cage fluttering against bruised ribs. At least her heart’s still beating. That’s all that matters. I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about robot rights. I don’t even care about orchestra right now. Erik’s dead and Mom’s hurt—my fried brain can’t process anything beyond that. Trembling, I hum a lullaby Nana used to sing to me whenever I had nightmares. F major always makes me feel better, but it’s going to take more than a simple melody to heal this hurt.

***

I must’ve fallen asleep still curled up next to Mom. Rurik arrives with steaming containers of fish-balls in cream sauce with boiled baby potatoes and crispy bacon bits. One of my favorites. He hands me a thermos of hot chocolate and a fork. I give him a smile as he kisses my hair. I was wrong earlier; we’re not growing apart. We’ve been together so long that little hiccups are bound to happen. I can’t imagine loving anyone else.

“How are you feeling, Maria?” Rurik asks my mom as I scoot off the bed and into a chair.

“Better. This HealGel is superb.” She pats her wrapped head and digs into the potatoes. I guess the pain meds have cushioned the blow of Erik’s death. I’m not sure I can eat.

“And you?” Rurik nudges me with an elbow as he pops a fish-ball into his mouth.

“Kind of blurry.” The food smells delicious and my stomach gurgles, reminding me how hungry I am.

“Thank you for dinner,” Mom says. “Far better than this hospital rubbish.”

“Do you remember what happened today?”

“My mom needs rest.” I try a fish-ball, but it tastes like sawdust.

“I’m just asking.”

“I think it can wait.” Especially since he’s probably not asking out of concern. I’ll bet Gunnar and the PARA party are dying to hear all the gory details.

“It’s okay.” Mom straightens up, looking a bit better though still whiter than starched sheets, a dusting of freckles now visible across her nose and forehead. That’s at least one thing I inherited from her.

“I was in the lab. Work as usual,” she says. “Didn’t know anything was happening until the alarm went off. We thought it was a fire drill.” She pauses and bites her bottom lip. “Erik and I went out together. There was blood all over the foyer. So much blood.” Mom’s lip trembles and she stabs her fork into a fish-ball before continuing.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“I want to, Tyri, it’s real. It happened. No use pretending otherwise.” She takes a deep breath and continues. “I thought they were people. I didn’t realize at first. They came at us with furniture and glass, with their fists. They hit Erik. Just kept hitting him.” She pauses, her hands shaking, and my heart breaks all over again. “Guess I was knocked from behind. I only came to when the medics were strapping me into the gurney. No idea what happened to my leg. “

The food turns to ashes on my tongue.

“Any idea why they did it?” Rurik asks.

“I imagine it had something to do with what happened at M-Tech on the weekend. They shouldn’t have done that. The people responsible were being dealt with,” Mom says.

“Is M-Tech going to be releasing an official statement?”

“Is this interrogation necessary?” Mom doesn’t deserve getting grilled for the benefit of PARA.

He gives me a stern look, and I feel like a scolded child. I reseal my dinner and drop the container on the floor.

“Well, I imagine they will.” Mom is prevented from saying more by the arrival of a nurse.

“Visiting hours are technically over and your mom needs to rest,” she says gently. “You can come back in the morning. Your mom will probably be discharged around ten.”

I thank the nurse and reluctantly kiss Mom goodbye.

“I’ll be with Rurik tonight if you need to contact me.”

“I’ll be fine, truly. Just need to sleep.” Mom yawns.

“I love you Mom.”

“Oh Tyri.” Mom returns my gentle hug. “I love you too.”

I traipse out of the ward leaving Rurik to carry all the dinner packages.

“You okay?” He asks as we step into the elevator.

“What do you think?” I sigh.

“Stupid question. Sorry.”

We ride down in silence. The elevator opens on an empty waiting room, only the names of the deceased scroll across the digisplay.

“Did you get the answers you wanted?”

“What do you mean?” Rurik feigns innocence.

“Come on, Rik. All those questions about M-Tech.”

“I’m curious.”

“Sounded more like something Gunnar would be asking.” I’m too tired to be angry even though I should be.

“Don’t you think the leader of PARA has a right to know exactly what happened?” He opens the bug door for me before hopping in himself.

“Not if it means grilling my mother.”

“We predicted something like this would happen.”

“We? Since when were you an active member?”

“I’m only helping out my brother.”

“By giving my mom the third degree?”

“We’re not the enemy here.” He gives me a penetrating look. “We wanted to prevent something like this from happening in the first place, and we want to make things right.”

“How?”

His expression darkens. “PARA thinks it might be time for more deliberate action. Talking hasn’t done much.”

“Deliberate action, like what?”

Rurik presses the start button and the bug’s engine hums. “What happened today might be construed as an act of war.”

“You think so?” My laughter is bitter. “I don’t think they want war. They just want to be acknowledged.”

“Well, they certainly got the country’s attention, and PARA plans to retaliate.”

“Retaliating with violence will only make things worse.” The bug zooms onto the street ways strung with glittering ropes of LEDs. “Is PARA willing to take that risk?” My insides tangle into knots at the thought of more riots and more people getting hurt.

“Robots attack you, murder Erik, and almost kill your mom. How can you still defend them?” His voice rises in anger.

“Have you forgotten how awful human beings can be? The reason we have robots at all is because
we
went to war.”

“It’s not the same. Robots are dangerous.”

“And humans aren’t? Tell that to the Jews who died in the Holocaust, to the ex-Soviet states, to the North Koreans! Not all robots are the same, just like not all people are the same.”

Nana didn’t have a violent string in her code. But maybe Rurik’s right. Nana was programmed to nurture. It wasn’t like she chose to be kind and loving—that’s what she was made to do. Despite everything I’ve just said, there’s a niggling resentment ballooning in my chest.

“Be that as it may, this never should’ve happened in the first place. It’s that stupid probot party and their amendment.” Rurik’s lips twist in disgust.

“So what does PARA plan to do?”

He casts me a long look, and the bug wafts dangerously close to the center string of lights.

“Gunnar’s organizing a meeting this weekend in Osholm. You still coming with me to the university?”

“Mom said I could, but that was before all this happened.”

“Your mom’ll be fine.” Rurik’s expression softens, and he reaches over to rub my knee. “If you want, you could come to the meeting and take part in the discussion.”

“Maybe.” I don’t want to get involved in politics, but these robots have hurt me and my family. If there’s a way to prevent that from ever happening again, I need to know.

All is quiet in Fragheim as I tread through the muck toward Max’s hut. I haven’t seen Max all morning. He could be lying in bits outside M-Tech. Maybe he was wise and never went marching in the first place. I scan my surroundings, wary of every shadow. It could be hours or days before the military bashes down our defenses and obliterates our teetering homes. I find pliers and a utility knife. I snap off the dull edge of the knife and wind out a new blade. Nanytes can heal synthetic flesh and bone, but they can’t remove the bullets.

The bullet in my lower back is the easiest to reach. My skin parts beneath the pressure of the blade. I grit my teeth against the pain I wish I could turn off and delve into the wound with a finger, feeling the edge of the bullet cozied up to my spine. It’s wedged so close to the circuitry of my CNS. Working quickly, before nanytes seal the rift in my flesh, I use the pliers to remove the bullet, trying not to disturb any wiring. One down, two to go.

The others are higher up, almost impossible to reach. Straining, I stretch my arm over my opposite shoulder, barely able to touch the wound with the blade.

My whole body aches, throbbing as I cut into the slab of muscle lying over my ribs. Eyes squeezed shut, I poke around with the pliers and find the bullet. It tears free with a nauseating sucking sound as nanytes hasten to repair the damage and prevent Cruor loss. As it is, the injuries are going to drain my fuel-cell dry.

The last bullet, shallower and easier to find, I manage to lever out with the nose of the pliers. Pain overwhelms my circuit, over-clocking my core. I stay in Max’s hut until the hurt subsides and my hands stop shaking. When my system restabilizes, I pull my coat back on and ditch the tools, heading for my own hut.

Some clothes, a flashlight, and a half-empty can of Cruor—all I own goes into my backpack. A moment of vertigo brings me to my knees. The nausea is fleeting and pointless, vomiting physically impossible. The dizziness passes, leaving me feeling peculiar. I ignore the sensation, probably the result of nanytes rewiring my bullet rent CNS.

Backpack secure, I sling my violin around my shoulders so that the instrument lies against my chest more precious than ever. The humans have no reason to believe we are anything more than machines incapable of compassion or mercy. A single performance with the orchestra isn’t going to change their minds, but it’s a start. It’s all I can do.

Having double-checked the contents of my hut for anything useful, I head over to Sal’s. She’s got a few extra shirts that might fit me, a comb, and a few flash drives. My emotion module whirs in over-drive against the guilt for rifling through Sal’s stuff and the rationalization that my hands on her stash are better than others’. Sal is dead. She’d be pissed if I left her things for scavengers who never knew her.

The cracked leather wallet I find stuffed inside a cookie tin holds thousands of krona and two transaction cards, making me rich—not that I’d risk upgrading my core processor or going in search of a new violin right now.

I stuff the wallet into my backpack and secret the cash in various pockets. There’s a toolbox, and beneath the first tray of rusty nails rests a black 9mm and a box of bullets. If Sal had really wanted to cause a riot, she would’ve taken the gun, not the knives. Why’d Sal even have a gun in the first place? My hand hovers over the weapon, my fingers leaving printless smudges on the polished metal. I’d rather the weapon end up at the bottom of the bay than in the hands of someone who plans to use it. Someone like Kit. I wrap the gun in a shirt and bury it at the bottom of the backpack. The bullets go into a sock tucked into a side pocket.

“Goodbye, Sal.” I run my fingers along the rough weave of her hammock. “If you have a soul, I hope it finds peace in the Great Beyond.”

Trudging through the mud, I head out of Fragheim and away from my home. Home. The word plays on repeat inside my head until the syllable loses all meaning and becomes mere sound. I have nowhere to go until Thursday at three-thirty. Nowhere to go and no one to call my friend. I traipse across the tracks, past graffiti splatters and humans curled up in post-weekend recovery mode, until I reach the hydrogen station.

Sal’s card scrambles the machine and I fill up, scanning the alleys and shadows for thieves. There’s a smattering of junkies but no robots. Pressure altered to accommodate a full tank, I head down an alley, angling away from the warehouses toward the docks. The docks lie rusted and abandoned where they weren’t shattered by ordnance during the war.

A single pier juts out into the murky waters, a concrete finger pointing south. Sleet sifts through the clouds, pricking the dark water with concentric ripples. The ice soaks my hair. I hope it’ll get rid of the remaining StickEmUp crusted on my scalp. My boots carry me to the end of the pier. The scent of brine fills my nostrils, tantalizing my pseudo olfactory cells with the possibility of some better place, some distant shore if only I could reach it. Robots can’t swim. We sink. Might not be such a bad way to go really. Sink to the seabed and wait until my system short circuits, the corals turning my body into a reef. There are worse ways to end a life.

I crouch and rummage through the backpack. The gun is heavy in my hand, sleek and deadly. I’ve never fired a gun before. Never wanted to. The wind whips my hair through my eyes, stinging my cheeks. Gun in hand, I spin and, with the loudest yell my voice box can muster, I hurl the gun toward the sea.