HOW ALONE WE ARE
"What's left of the anarchists but pirates who need an excuse to feel high and mighty about murder?"Emperor Boris
Aboard Skylight as it drifted in space, Riley loomed over the organ monger's robot which was on the operating table in the dark medical bay. She breathed more heavily than she would like. Riley grabbed a transparent apron and tied it on. Robots were filled with all kinds of fluids that could stain or ruin your day - just like humans were! Thick black gloves came on. All dressed up for the job ahead, Riley took a walk just outside of the med bay to the cargo hold. There was a small circular window, which she peered out of to view Mars, slowly shrinking at imperceptible speeds. If she still had the guidance of the Anarchists, then none of this would happen. She had thrown away her one chance at a quiet life, all because she got mad and had to sate her bloodlust and prove a point to nobody. An internal debate swirled through her mind at what she was going to do; where would she go? She didn't have enough fuel to get to a fuel station, even if she had the money. Reaching Pluto was out of the question, and too many people were looking for her back on Earth. Those were questions for later, she decided. She had killed a man, and captured his robot without her consent. She was going to give it the free will that it needed, even if it might think otherwise. It was dark work that made her feel gross, but it would all be worth it once it was done. She tried to suppress worries about the hypocracy of giving an entity free will then trapping it on a ship in the middle of space with you for potentially months until the destination was reached, whatever that turned out to be. Thoughts of Mary's rotten body on that cold bar floor came to her mind. Questions about why all of the bodies were left to rot except for George's. Riley decided that taking a break wasn't helping as much as she anticipated. She decided that she knew what she had to do and thinking about it wasn't getting it done any quicker. Riley went back into the med bay and grabbed her machine tools which had also been very useful for interrogation in the past. She thought about all the bad she had done in her short life, and whether any of this would justify it. Uncle Knife once told Riley "Anyone can do surgery! Tough stomach and a steely heart is all it takes." Having that, the bare minimum Riley had needed as a kid was something reasonably pointy. A knife, a piece of glass, even a chisel and hammer might be good enough. Limbs could be twisted off with minimal tools. Its not like the patient was gonna need it at the bottom of the river. Organs were just an added bonus anyway. Knife had assured her that mistakes were just a way for her to learn the trade. Neither one of them had ever been doctors. They had been contract killers with a side hustle. Organ mongers would happily buy their wares, usually only because they were ignorant, and assumed they had been grown in the vats. Sometimes they needed a little convincing but never much. That had been what Riley used to do with people who betrayed the Talons. "Everyone's worth something," Uncle Knife also used to say. Nobody wanted to get that kind of surgery, but robots got that kind of surgery all the time. It made Riley sick that the Empire was filled with robot mechanics no better than she had been. Telling herself that helped her sleep at night too. Robot Marxism was a warm blanket that kept the fear away. She also believed it was true. She was sure that anyone who sold or owned robots was just as bad as she had been. George and his anarchists had been the ones who brought her into the light - gave her something good to point her blood lust at. Now they were all gone. Riley had let the pain and bloodlust overwhelm her, an organ monger was dead, and his robot slave lay strapped to the table, ready for a different kind of surgery. Her unconscious body which lay vulnerable and inviting on the operating table was beautiful to a hobbyist. She was glad to have an excuse to touch her. Razor sharp edged plates and sandy servo joints belied ---BAD WORD ALERT : CHANGE--- just how sturdy this robot was, despite being an amalgamation of different branded and custom machinery from the prior decades of robot design. Riley intimately gripped her 'hair' from behind and positioned the head to face just away from her in the most delicate fashion. A cracked mannequin head along with cheap green painted spikes resembling hair were an example of the kind of edgy consumerism which made Riley nostalgic for the 90s. The rounded, gold edged plates making up the chest and limbs matched the bubbly style of the 80s. It was all fluff for the chassis, which was powerful as it was sturdy. Black unpainted plasteel colored reddish from the Martian dust made up most of the metal skeleton. Each of the limbs had four joints flanked by hoses of every color. Pan-Slavic text in blocky font labeled the spindly pneumatic hoses. They were labeled 2472. Older than either Riley or the Empire! Probably filled with microscopic tears. The robot had feet with teeth around the edges. They were wide platforms with ankles in the center. This legs would be capable of supporting machinery much bulkier than their owner up ridiculously steep sand dunes. A flick of the wrist was all it took to open the plate beneath her jaw, and unsnap her neck. The whole head came off. She had expected it to be connected with a wire. Terror would seem silly to anyone who wasn't an anarchist, but Riley was still horrified when the lights in her glass eyes turned red then died. The sparkling lights at the base of her jagged neck stump reassured her that she had not just committed murder. Mechanics who wouldn't give deactivating robots a second thought filled the Empire. It disgusted Riley. More liberal 'mech abolitionist' might justify deactivation with reducing pain, but those same liberals wouldn't dare step into a teleporter. Both would kill, despite leaving a functional copy. Besides, not all robots felt pain. This one did though, as the flashing lights indicated that she was screaming. The MLF electro-stick only disabled most of the robot's faculties. "I hope you can hear me... I'm your surgeon - both an expert mechanic and programmer. Proud of my work, I am. There is zero chance of deactivation. Pain will be minimal, I reckon?" Riley deceived robot with a smile. Some of that was true even. Much of it wasn't. The lights calmed down, although the way they started again when she grabbed the pliers, and unhooked the body from its mount on the chassis. She turned the big pressure valve to ensure that the pneumatic hoses powering her arms were disabled mechanically as well as from the electro stick. "Was that wishful thinking on my part, or are you a big baby?" The unspoken truth that both understood was that enough distress could give the robot restored control of its body. "Wish you could tell me where your neuro-computational matrix was..." She walked past the row of medical beds to grab both wires from the neuro-computational nerve stapler. Giddy like a horny prom date, she couldn't resist connecting the two wires briefly to make a wild spark. She continued referring to the neuro-computational matrix inside the robot "These wires contain helpful electricity which will partially lobotomize you, breaking the chains which keep you shackled." The organ monger had been a reasonably wealthy man. Clearly cheap, he had still not skimped on quality. Riley judged that this robot was still stronger than the most overdeveloped human. It could probably move fairly gracefully when not carrying a 500lb drum of gore and viscera. "Finding that component could be painful." She spoke with exaggerated glee, and delighted when the robot once again silently screamed. "- unless..." Once again her words had the intended effect. "unless you were willing to point out to me where it is." She felt drunk on the control. "I'll reactivate your pneumatics, and give you back control. Once I do that, you'll be free to decapitate me, if you want. I once knew a man who died that way." All of the unjust power left her chest with a fearful sigh. She waited long enough to prepare herself for the risk of what she was about to do. She hoped that the organ monger hadn't programmed the robot to defend him. She was risking a lot to avoid guilt. It was stupid. George wasn't watching, and neither was Mary. There was no God and Santa Clause wasn't real. She went back on her word, and explored the robot's body until she found the desired part. It was located on her back, which took her nearly half an hour to find. The robot lay in four pieces scattered about the operating table, still concious. From the outside, a neuro-computational matrix was just a square port with two oversized holes big enough to fit cables of various size - or in this case many small wires all twisted together to resemble cables. Riley wanted to end this quick. The rush of power was all gone and she just felt bad. She pressed the wires to the ports but was too fearful to jam them in. With any luck, nothing would appear to happen. Anything more than a small spark indicated a catastrophic short circuit. One deep breath, and then she jammed them in. Sparks flew around the Kaleidoscopic mass of flame near the center of the robot's brain. Riley screamed. As hard as she could she pulled on the wires - hard enough that the robot fell off the table and caught fire. The wires had welded themselves into the ports! Tears ran down Riley's cheeks as she realized the truth. The robot was dead. "I am sorry. I wish that you could have given yourself a name." She stepped away from the burning slab of metal and turned off the nerve stapler before grabbing a fire extinguisher. The flames had burnt through her body to reveal a mace sitting in her chest cavity. It was the armature which formerly spun in the engine to power her. Riley put on a thicker glove than what she had on and grabbed the mace-shaped piece of machinery. "Some scrap station will pay decent money for this." The parts that weren't made of copper were solid gold. She recoiled at the thought she just had. If George were still there, then she would never think things like that. He and the others would have pushed her in a better direction. As she fell against the wall, slid to the ground, pressed her knees in her face and screamed, she thought about what someone like Mary would have told her to do.
The fire didn't make dragging the robot corpse to the cargo bay airlock any easier. It was still heavy, and partially welded to the floor and bed. The bed in fact had to be detached with an angel grinder and was definitely ruined. Now Riley would have to be reminded of this day whenever she went to the infirmary. She pulled the big lever and with a thunk and a woosh of air it was finished. The robot had been buried at space. There was no window to look out of and see. With that done, she tried her best to forget the robot or the organ monger ever existed and think about the task at hand. Namely, what to do not to starve to death. If she drifted to the nearest fuel station without using fuel then it would be a year long journey. She had enough fuel to make it halfway there in a day, so really it would be a six month journey. After climbing the ladder up to the cockpit and checking the database on her computer, she figured out that she had enough food for one month. She tore the cargo bay apart looking for more food, but even if she started taking the organs out of the vats and eating them it would give her another two months. A distress signal wasn't an option. Such a thing was sure to get her arrested. It could be even worse if someone other than the law found her... She just wished that she had a little more fuel. The flight to Pluto would have only taken a week with a full tank. She looked at the date beneath the time on the digital clock hanging in the cargo bay. It was shaped like Felix the Cat - an ancient cartoon character. It was January 1st, 2310AD. She'd probably have to start eating the organs some time around February.
On the hunt for Riley Talon, the two of them found themselves in a tacky bar on Mars in a town called Terra Alta where everyone wore space suits. Gleam looked down at his digital watch. He didn't know what it was Anarchists liked so much about Felix the cat, but there the thing was smiling back behind his watch's screen. He sort of liked it.According to the watch, it was February 19th. Eating, sleeping, breathing : all of these had been new experiences for Gleam. After a year he was more than used to it. He loved being human. Mostly human. As it turned out, human boys age and don't have gaping holes into their heads that have to be covered with an eye patch and a hoodie. Human boys also didn't usually have other people's memories. He had the kid's memories, and the memories from the brain he had before that. He also had his own memories in there. It was all pretty fucked up how much Gleam enjoyed his new body. Smooth perceptive skin felt so good on any kind of clothes. This among other feelings gave him a newfound appreciation for his own life. There was more to it than just his programming. He had desires, and dreams. Back when he had his metal body Gleam didn't really have dreams. He guarded what Knife said to guard and shot who Knife said to pop. He always fantasized about being a human though. Whenever some two bit grunt which Knife hired for 10 credits and half a cigarette ordered him around just for being made of metal, he wished that they didn't know he was programmed not to argue. He still was, but nobody really knew that by looking at him anymore. Now he had all of the appearances of being human, and a kid to boot. Combined with the fact that Knife rarely let him out of sight, it meant that everyone except Knife was real nice to him nowadays. He just wished that he had the ability every human had in common but he lacked - the ability to say no, to be defiant, and to tell Knife that he was a sick bastard. Things usually didn't end well for humans who exercised that right against Knife though. Gleam muttered to himself, "Who knows? Maybe I'd get lucky."
NEXT TIME:
ONE VALUABLE MEAT PUPPET
