Muzibot still can’t stop staring. Her hair is filthy, dress drenched red and adorned with entrails. Makeup a distant memory, but it’s her. Riya Natrajan. Muzibot grits nonexistent teeth, praying his mechanical prayers that Elkin doesn’t notice. “That beast took Nomvula,” Muzibot reminds them, before the introductions get a chance to make their way around. It doesn’t matter who’s in whose body, who can disappear into thin air, and who refused to sign Elkin’s precious bong. What matters is saving the world from Sydney.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me, laaitie,” Rife says, his eyes drawing on Muzibot. Muzibot suddenly feels self-conscious. Riya Natrajan’s sharp gaze settles on him, too, and it’s enough to make him want to crawl out of his own tin.
“No shitting,” Muzibot warbles. “We’ve got to follow that . . . whatever it was. I have to be there to help Nomvula.” He’d promised.
Riya Natrajan nods her head as if she knows of his vow. “Come on. The beast went that way.”
Elkin’s no idiot. There’s no way he won’t recognize that voice. He knows every single one of her songs, has watched every interview she’s done, even those dubbed over in Japanese and German and Hindi. Elkin folds his arms over his chest, clenches his jaw, lips pursed. “I’m not going anywhere with her. Not until she apologizes.”
Muzibot sighs, sounding something like an off-tune harmonica. “The end of the world as we know it is moments away, and you’re hung up over a stupid grudge?”
“It’s not stupid. You saw the way she looked at us. Like we were nothing. Like we were less than nothing. And now she thinks we’ll follow her around like mindless imps!”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Muzibot says. He nudges Riya. She recoils from his touch. And damn it if Elkin isn’t right. There’s that look again. Too late she tries to hide her revulsion, but Elkin notices, too.
“See! She’s doing it again.” There’s so much pain on his face. On Muzi’s face, that is. Whatever stone fa?ade Elkin had been able to keep up in his own body, he lacks now.
Muzibot wraps a spindly arm around Elkin’s waist. “Come on. We can find Sydney ourselves.”
“You’re just kids!” Rife calls after them.
“I’m a man, damn it! We’re men,” Muzi says.
Elkin shouts back, cheeks Irish red. “We’ve earned our battle scars today, and you can’t tell us otherwise.”
“You can’t stop us!” Muzibot howls in agreement. “Nothing can stop us!”
There is one thing, Clever4–1 chimes in. The secondary hard drive is nearing capacity again. Disk space is being consumed at exponential speeds. Projected data corruption estimated in twenty-eight point six seconds.
“Is the whole freaking universe against us?” Muzibot screams, internally, externally, and in all those dark recesses between.
There are parts available. Those bots we left inside. We could commandeer their disks, and then—
Absolutely not. I’m not taking lives to save my own. Not even artificial life.
I’ll give up mine, then. Two point eight terabytes. It’s not a lot, but it might buy you enough time to find an alternate solution.
Why would you offer that? Doesn’t that go against everything you’ve been fighting for? You’d give up your own life for a human’s?
Don’t you get it? You’re one of us now. But even if you were still flesh, I’d do the same. You’ve always been good to me, Muzikayise McCarthy (Friend).
The circuits of Muzibot’s visual input twinge, though it’s impossible to shed tears. Constricted thoughts begin to loosen as subroutines are erased by the hundreds.
No! Muzibot cries out, but it’s only nanoseconds before his omniscience starts bleeding onto those newly freed sectors. Clever4–1’s sacrifice has given him a couple minutes at best, but Muzibot won’t let it be in vain. He opens up his comm ports and sends an open, unencrypted broadcast to any Clever listening. His plea is short. Sweet. Urgent. Brother in trouble. Spare disk space needed immediately. Followed by his physical coordinates. No time for lengthy appeals to their moral conscience. Either they’ll help, or they won’t.
“What’s wrong?” Elkin is saying; not even a breath has passed for him.
Rife and Riya hobble toward them, something like real remorse on their faces.
“Clever4–1. It’s gone,” Muzibot says. “There’s too much in my mind. There’s no room left.”
“What do you mean?” Elkin shakes Muzibot until his bolts rattle. “What does that mean!”
“It means that if a bot doesn’t show up here in the next minute, there’ll be nothing left of me. I’ll be corrupted out of existence.”
Elkin’s face screws up.
“Promise me you’ll help Nomvula. All of you. Together,” Muzibot says. His thoughts start constricting all over again, his mind dizzy and surreal. He looks up at his old face nodding back at him, tears plinking onto the dome surface of his new body. “And promise me no tattoos.”
Elkin almost smiles, but all traces disappear like a snubbed candle. “This is my fault. You shouldn’t have come to save me.”
“I’d do it again a thousand times over.” Muzibot laughs his synthesized laugh, wishing so badly that he had lips right now. Elkin gives him a peck on the cheek, registering as a localized change in temperature in his circuitry, but Muzibot feels so much more.
“I’ll never forget you,” Elkin says, rubbing back tears with his sleeve.
This time Muzibot’s hearing starts to go first, the drumming of a thousand needles on concrete overtaking his auditory sensors—scattering his thoughts, stealing this moment. Odd thing is, Elkin acts like he hears it, too, and checks back over his shoulder. “Holy shit!” he yells, then props Muzibot up, facing the sea of bots heading their direction, all makes and models, all shapes and sizes. Elkin fumbles underneath Muzibot for the door of his access port, then yanks his Dobi-12 wire so hard it nearly detaches from the spindle. He direct connects with the first bot to arrive, spare drive space written over in a matter of seconds, but they’re daisy-chaining together just as fast. His mind flows over them like a tidal wave unleashed, and Muzibot shudders at the pleasure of having so much space, the biggest high he’s ever experienced. He’s a part of all of them now, three hundred eighty bots in all, all come to his rescue. They’re a hivemind, and he’s the queen bee, orchestrating them to latch together into a kickass entity, five stories high—arms, legs, head—seeing in a million directions at once, movement grand and powerful, yet delicate enough to pluck Elkin like a fragile rose and sit him into a cockpit designed just for him.
“Okay,” Elkin says, still quivering from shock. “I’ve got the sickest boyfriend ever! I love you so hard right now.” Elkin rubs his fingers over an instrument panel, then the flight stick between his legs. A virtual keyboard lights up in his lap. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says, fingers greedily plying the heads-up display. “This is actual military intelligence, bru. Top-secret shit!”