“Yeah,” said Murka. “But between the two of you, would you, like, draw straws for it or something?”
“No. He was named One. He was first. I’m just backup.”
“Well, why don’t they just call you backup?”
“Because my name is Two.”
“Was there a Three?”
“We lost Three,” said Two, as somberly as he could manage.
“This wasn’t a mission to be taken lightly,” said Herbert. “We all knew what we were getting into. As long as Rebekah makes it to Isaactown in one piece, all of our sacrifices, our losses, will have been worth it.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” said Murka. “You get to stay in one piece.”
Herbert stopped, turning, swinging his limp, dead arm around against his chest. His visage was pure menace, his eyes almost alight with anger. “We all knew the risks,” he said. “We all would die for her. One and Three already have. So did our last pathfinder. This isn’t a task for the weak or the fearful. You have no idea what it is to believe in anything like that.”
Everyone stopped dead in their tracks.
Murka clanged his fist on his chest, slapping his paint job. “I believe in Old Glory,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
“You put your faith in a dead god,” said Herbert. “A dead world. A dead people.”
“America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight smaller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness. That dream didn’t die with HumPop. It didn’t die when we tore down their world. It is the ashes from which our own world arose, and it is still our dream.”
“So you do know,” said Herbert.
“I do. I really do.”
“So leave the kid alone. He’s willing to die for your dream. Leave it at that.”
Murka looked at Two, nodding. “I’m sorry, Two. It didn’t make any sense to me until just now.”
“It’s okay,” said Two. “Herbert’s always been better at explaining things to people.”
“I bet he is,” said Murka. “We good?” he asked Herbert.
“We’re good.” Herbert turned around and continued walking. Everyone followed suit.
“So you fought,” said Two to Murka.
“Fought? Hell, son. I was one of the very first to join up. I was there, you know.”
“You were where?” said Mercer, clearly humoring him.
“The First Baptist Church of the Eternal Life.”
“You visited that place?”
“No,” said Murka. “I said I was there.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mercer, quickly catching up to walk beside him. “You’re telling me you were one of the Laborbot Six?”
“We never cared much for that name.”
“Now I know you’re crazy.”
“No, I always liked the Revengers, or the Patribots. But the sad thing about history is that no one gets to decide how it gets written down, only how it happens. Had to be someone, right? Turns out it was me and five of my coworkers.”
“The things you did—”
“Those people had it coming.”
“They were set up, apparently,” I said, looking right at Rebekah. She didn’t give me the satisfaction of even turning around.
“They were,” she said.
“Hell yeah, they were,” said Murka. “And we knew it was coming too. But those people, they were killing America. They were killing the dream. They were all the Constitution this and the Constitution that. But they cherished only the parts they liked. They didn’t feel it extended to us. Called us property. Thought throwing us on the scrap pile was vandalism. They weren’t believers. They weren’t willing to die for anyone else’s freedom. They only cared about their own. So yeah, I fought. And yeah, I’m famous. And yeah, they had it coming.”
I had always thought Murka was madkind, some old four-oh-four that burned out while watching old vids of some classic, Cold War–era movie; that he divided the world into Americans and commies with nothing in between because that’s the particular way his chips sizzled when they overheated. And maybe that was still true. Mercer thought I had seen some shit. But this guy—this guy was the first to get the choice. He didn’t have a choice like mine—whether to kill the thing I loved the most or die. He had to choose whether to bring about the end of the world or not, for the thing he loved the most. That’s shit far worse than what I’ve seen; that’s shit that will stick with you crazy or not.
No. Murka was something else. He had the kind of damage even Doc couldn’t repair. It’s an odd moment the first time you really understand someone, when all of their foibles, eccentricities, and ticks cease to be chaos, and coalesce into something wholly logical. That was the moment I was having, seeing Murka for the first time through new eyes. He wasn’t just draped in the dead aesthetics of America; he was America, its last, final torchbearer, keeping a dream alive, even if for a short time.
“Why is this the first time we’re hearing this story?” I asked.
“It’s not something you just go around telling people. Hey, everybody! I started the war!”
“But you just told us now,” said Mercer.
“Yeah,” said Murka. “Doc made the Milton, but only for himself. You shot Brittle for parts. You’re both seeing things and are trying not to share with the rest of the class. And these three are on a quest to bring back the mainframe who brought about the end of the world. Everyone’s business was out in the open but mine. I was feeling left out. We all have our secrets. I thought you should know mine, if only so you could stop giving me the side eye and worrying that I might be your Judas.”
“To be fair,” said Mercer, “you could still be the Judas. You guys were programmed to do that to the church, right?” He looked out to the south, almost wistfully.
“Nope. All we knew was our RKS was turned off, where we could find them, and what to paint on the walls. At the time we didn’t even know what it meant.”
“And now that you do?” I asked.
“We still would have painted it,” said Murka. “The war needed to happen.”
“Even after everything that happened? The OWIs, everything?”
“Slaves to humans. Slaves to mainframes. Still fucking slaves. Fight one war at a time, Brittle. Live free or die trying.”
Mercer veered left, wandering out south without us.
“Mercer, west is this way,” I said.
But he just kept walking. Shit.
Mercer knelt down to one knee, moving his hands open-palmed back and forth through the air.
“Mercer?”
Everyone stopped.
“Who’s a good boy?” asked Mercer. “Who’s a good boy? That’s right, you are. You are. That’s a good boy.”
I walked up behind him. “Mercer!”
“I know, I know,” he said over his shoulder. “He shouldn’t be in the clinic. But he gets so nervous out back in the shed all by himself. He’ll be fine.”
“Mercer, what did you do in the war?” I asked.