“Don’t be silly.” Delphine’s strong massage was like ice on the back of Eureka’s neck. “I’ve told everyone about you.”
“What are they doing?” Eureka gestured at the other two robots, which had not looked up from the glowing pit.
“I can’t wait to show you,” Delphine said, and drew Eureka closer.
“Wait.” Beyond the glowing pit, close to where the suspended wave’s lip hovered above the shore, five more robots slept on chaise longues beneath a wide umbrella.
“Those robots are still filling,” Delphine said. “Soon they will be alive with the experiences of hundreds of millions of souls.”
Eureka slid from Delphine’s grip and climbed a slope of sand toward the sleeping robots. Ocean sounds rushed above her, but the waveshop’s watery walls held still.
Wisps of light gathered around the robots’ skin. She knew this aura was made of ghosts, that all the energy flowing into the machines came from someone she had killed.
“What happens when they’re filled?”
“Then come the beatings,” Delphine said.
Eureka eyed the scars on the backs of the waking robots poring over their maps.
“They don’t wake from the Filling obedient,” Delphine said. “Not with all those willful ghosts competing inside.” She reached for a silver whip resting on a silver table near the sleeping robots. A blue jellyfish writhed at its tip. She passed the whip to Eureka. It was as light as a ghost.
“In my hand, this whip deals deep lashes of transformational pain. I train my robots to allow only their ghosts’ efficient and useful attributes to rise to the surface. This enables my boys to perform many millions of tasks—with no threat of rebellion.” Delphine paused, turned Eureka’s face to hers. “This work is in your blood and in your tears. Do you understand?”
Eureka was repulsed and shamelessly intrigued. “What kinds of tasks?”
“Anything. Everything. Dry out the world you drowned, pave roads, plant crops, slaughter stragglers, cure diseases, erect a stunning empire that spans the globe.” Delphine pointed at the robots’ glowing auras. “See the possibilities flowing in.”
Tiny images flashed around the machines: a hand writing a letter, a boot wedging a shovel into soil, a computer monitor filled with complicated code, a sprinter’s legs crossing a golden meadow. Just as Eureka recognized each flash it disappeared inside its robot, which acknowledged the acquisition with a muscle flex or a facial twitch, as if it were having a nightmare.
One robot’s eyes opened. Delphine placed two fingers in the infinity-shaped indentation on its neck and twisted clockwise, just as Solon had demonstrated at the Bitter Cloud.
“Go back to sleep, pet. Dream.…”
Eureka should have felt horrified, but there was something tempting about sparing a soul’s most essential knowledge, memory, or experience—and lobotomizing the rest. She wished she could have done it to herself after Diana died.
It wasn’t like Eureka recognized the dead flowing into the robots. She didn’t see her brother’s hands performing a magic trick or Cat solving a calculus equation in the robots’ auras.
“After the beatings,” Delphine explained with a smile, “I turn the ghost robots over to Atlas. Their dissemination across the drowned world has long been his vision. He will take care of the dirty work for us. All you and I have to do is wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“The opportunity to turn everything against him.”
Delphine led Eureka to a tall mirror in the center of the waveshop. It was made of softly undulating water. Eureka didn’t want to look, but the temptation was too strong. Cold gripped her stomach when Delphine’s stunning reflection appeared where Eureka’s should have been. When she looked at the space before Delphine, Eureka’s own face smiled darkly back.
“The world will be ours, Eureka.” Her voice sounded precisely like Diana’s. Eureka closed her eyes, leaning closer to her dark, seductive ancestor.