《The Last War》


 An Old Soldier

    It was a balmy summer''s day, with the low murmur of crashing waves in the distance, the whisper of winds through pine boughs, and the low buzz of cicadas all swirling together in a kind of dreamy melody.


    Noah raised a hand to shield his eyes from the rays of the sun that filtered down through the forest around him, dappling the dead leaves and pine cones that covered the ground with gentle gold. Up there, ahead, through rows of tree trunks that seemed strangely orderly for nature, was The Factory. Noah thought of it like that, The Factory, though there were certainly others of its kind.


    It was monolithic in nature, and enormous; he had never seen it from far enough away to glimpse its full shape. A building of sleek curves that flowed and melted into each other, seemingly coated entirely in reflective metal, with no entrances - at least, none that he could see from here. Why it had been built so oddly, Noah could not guess. It was not made for humans. Only the bots worked in there. It may well be that no human had ever set a foot inside whatsoever.


    "Noah," came a worried female voice from over his shoulder. "Hey - I don''t think we''re supposed to be this close."


    Noah glanced behind him. There, floating in the air, was a smooth black orb about the size of his head. Purple lines of light traced across its surface, in the shape of a stylized eye; they briefly shimmered and danced, warping into a cartoon trace of the face of a worried young woman, with short-cropped hair that cut off at her jawbone. "Lighten up, Penny," he replied. "No one said we couldn''t be this close, did they?"


    The face of the young woman on the surface of the black orb frowned. "Yeah, but..." A faint shimmer of blue light ran over its surface - a sign, Noah knew, that Penny had connected to an online database; probably searching for horror stories of what happened to people who got too close to buildings like these. Apparently finding nothing, the young woman pouted. "It''s just...industrial buildings like this can be dangerous. They aren''t designed for human safety."


    Noah waved her off and turned back toward the building. Penny was his ball-bot....well, not his, exactly. He didn''t own her. The little things had minds of their own, but they were designed to bond with, watch over and assist humans. He had known Penny since he was a young child; they had met on a playground where, noticing he was lonely, Penny had floated over and begun playing hide and seek with him, and well - that was apparently all it took to get her to follow him for the rest of his life. Fairies, some called them; he didn''t know why, exactly, it was decided they should be made, but it was not uncommon to see small swarms of them drifting lazily through the air when they were not accompanying a human, burbling to each other.


    Just then, the strange, mirror-coated building seemed to hum; a hum so deep Noah could feel it in his bones, even from this distance. A seam opened in one curling, silver globe, where moments before the surface had seemed flawless; steam hissed out, in quantities enough to blanket the forest floor in fog.


    And following the swirling gray torrents came dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of floating little bots, of a diversity of shapes and sizes, ascending wildly into the air like sparks thrown from a campfire. Some were featureless black orbs, like the fairies; others pronged and silver like the tines of a crown. Others wove through the air like snakes, countless jointed sections undulating against each other, and still others seemed almost like gigantic balls of tubes tangled in on each other, stretching taut like straining muscle. And one gigantic one twirled in the air like some sort of dancing jellyfish, largely transparent except for pulsating lights within that traced out the lengths of its tentacles and ended in a tangled cluster in what might generously be called its head.


    All into the air they rose, weaving around each other, some seeming to float lazily while others shot forth with urgency. Noah leapt to his feet, watching their dance with delight, until the last of them was little more than a glint against the clear blue sky.


    "Those were some weird ones," he murmured, when he finally let his eyes drop. "Couldn''t even tell what half of them were for. Do you think they''re off to fight the war?"


    An eye was all that graced Penny''s surface once again; pink and purple and staring. "I don''t know," she replied softly, after a moment. "I don''t like to think about that." A blue shimmer ran over her surface, and then she added, more light-heartedly, "Why don''t we start heading back? You must be getting hungry about now."


    ~*~*~*~*~*~


    The Factory was located at the top of a pine-covered hill; accessible by gentle slopes on foot, but with a sheer drop to sharp rocks battered by the waves of the Atlantic facing the ocean. From a distance, it was barely visible through the pine trees; just a strange silver glimmer that caught the light of the sun now and again.


    It was down these slopes that Noah walked now, his long legs carrying him quickly. He was tall, and just a touch heavier than what some would call scrawny; skin tan, and burnt in some places; a mop of messy brown hair that had a slightly dark red tinge, from long hours spent in the sun. He wore rough and faded jeans, and a white button-down shirt rolled up around his forearms that blew, untucked, behind him in the wind. Not a shirt he would normally wear, he thought; he didn''t care much for fashion, but Penny had said it looked good on him.


    Penny, for her part, was clearly eager to leave the topic of The Factory behind. She orbited around his head, lights dancing playfully across her surface, as she hummed a wordless, lilting tune; whenever Noah mused thoughtfully about what might be going on within The Factory, she replied with nothing more than an exasperated "Oh, who knows!" before resuming her singing. Eventually, he stopped trying to bother her; Penny could be touchy like that, downright childish when something bothered her.


    The winding dirt path beneath his feet led him close to the oceanside cliffs; the sound of the ocean waves grew louder and louder. They tugged at Noah''s thoughts, as if he were being led out with the tide; Penny''s singing faded from his awareness as he imagined himself flying out over the churning foam of the ocean, weightless and limitless.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    So ensconced was he in the daydream that he almost shouted when, turning his attention back to where he was walking, he noticed the man in his path.


    The man was old, and gaunt; a curtain of gray hair ringed around the bald top of his head. He wore pair of slacks too loose for him that billowed in the wind, and a sharp tweed jacket. He stood at a little culvert along the path, where there lay a bench and worn wooden fence that looked out over the seaside cliffs, staring at the crashing waves that lay far below as if waiting for something.


    A droid, perhaps? Noah wasn''t sure, but it would be a little odd. Droids could look pretty lifelike these days, but he had never seen one choose to make itself look so worn and tired. Could be a human that had uploaded themselves into a droid; they had odd tastes sometimes.


    The man turned as he approached, and Noah caught himself just sort of gasping. Half of the man''s face was the twisted, ruined flesh of a scar; it swallowed most of his jaw and crawled up his right cheek, carving across his eye to end in a whisper upon his brow. Noah had never seen a scar so brutal; he resolved that it would be rude to stare. "Hello," he said light-heartedly, giving the man a little wave as he passed by.


    The man did nothing but stare silently, wispy gray hair whipping about his head. Noah had passed him by already when finally the man spoke. "Young man," he said, in a voice that was surprisingly sharp and clear for his frailty, "Were you up there checking out The Factory?"


    Noah paused, and turned slowly. "Yes," he said carefully, as the old man stared at him with eyes the color of stormclouds. "Was I not supposed to?"


    The old man gave a smile, though it was difficult to tell beneath the scar. "Not at all," he chuckled. "I was just heading up to see it myself. Curious about how the war effort is going, and all."


    "So those are war bots it''s making up there," Noah said with satisfaction, no longer feeling nervous about the old man. He took a step closer, as Penny hummed and whistled anxiously behind him.


    The old man paused in his chuckling, and stared down at the ground. "No, you wouldn''t know, would you," he said quietly. "Why should you?" He glanced back up at Noah, his expression unreadable beneath his scar. "Pardon me, I haven''t introduced myself. I''m Theodore."


    "Uh, Noah," Noah replied, a little taken aback by the formal introduction. "Are you new in town? I haven''t seen you around before, I don''t think."


    "You might say that." Theodore smiled, a bit blandly. "Mind telling an old man what sort of things there are to do here?"


    Despite his initial misgivings, Noah found the old man quite charming, as they chatted about the interesting sights about town. There was the beach, of course; and a fine river for fishing, but there were also more sophisticated attractions. The supercomputing center which hosted the governor-level AGI was open to visitors, and spare processing power could be used for scientific or artistic simulations; and there was still the old VR gaming arcade, though those had fallen out of fashion by now. As he talked, Noah found himself wondering again if the man was a droid. Penny would know - her sensors were sensitive enough to detect a heartbeat and other signatures of biology - but it would be rude to just ask her in front of the man.


    Theodore nodded and hummed appreciatively as Noah detailed all the town had to offer, but his eyes kept wandering up the hill. "Well, sounds like I made a good choice in coming here," he murmured once Noah had finished. "Though...seems a bit odd, doesn''t it, that they''d build a Factory here."


    Noah frowned. "I''d thought it was a bit odd myself, when it first popped up a few years ago. Don''t the governor AIs usually keep industry centralized in order to make it easier to scrub pollution?"


    "Also it''s dangerous for the humans here. Definitely dangerous," Penny muttered, as she drifted lazily past Noah''s head.


    Theodore was quiet long enough for Noah to begin feeling uneasy. His face, formerly smiling and friendly even with the grotesque scar, now seemed carved from stone. "I can tell you why they do it," he said, his voice suddenly harsh and clipped. Noah felt as if he was being judged beneath the man''s harsh stare. "They''re decentralizing industry. So it can''t be taken out all at once. In case the Manu invade."


    Noah felt his heart skip a beat. "That...that wouldn''t happen," he managed to force out, through lips that suddenly seemed too dry. "The Manu aren''t even in our solar system, and the bots are - they''re dealing with them."


    "Are they now," Theodore asked. His gray eyes regarded Penny coldly, and she drifted back a bit in trepidation. "Do you think they''d tell you if they were losing? They didn''t even bother to tell you they were building a war factory here. And they''re preparing for an invasion, so Strategos at least thinks it''s a possibility." His gaze dropped back to Noah, and he simply stared for a long moment, and then sighed, turning away. "Doesn''t even feel like a war, does it," he murmured into the wind. "Not at all, no, not at all. Bots control everything; no humans even fighting in it. Not like the last war."


    Noah wasn''t sure what the old man meant; he had no frame of reference for what it should feel like to be at war. He only knew the current one. In fact, nobody he knew what it was like to be at war; nobody should, unless...


    Something clicked. Theodore''s age, his horrible scar. There was one way the old man would know what war was supposed to be like. "Um," Noah said, trying to conceal his awe, "Sir, could I ask - how do you know what war is supposed to feel like? Did you..."


    Theodore didn''t say anything as Noah trailed off, letting the wind howl in answer for a while, thin gray hair dancing across his skull. "Yes," he replied finally. "I fought in the War for Humanity."


    Noah was agog. To think he had been chatting with the man so casually. If he had fought in the War for Humanity, Theodore had to be close to two centuries old, at least. But it wasn''t just his age; he was a veteran of the War for Humanity - the last war humanity had ever fought with itself. A distant age of terror, whose whispers sometimes reached up from the history books; it seemed so alien, so awful. And yet here was a man who had lived through it. It felt almost surreal; as if someone from a nightmare had stepped through into the real world. He was struck with the absurd urge to run away. "I....um, I...." he stammered.


    "Oh, please don''t go thanking me," Theodore said, with a long sigh. The old man looked him up and down, sighed again, and stepped back from the cliffs and onto the path. "Look, it was....nice meeting you, Noah. Thanks for the tips and all that. I suppose I''ll probably see you around town." And with that, Theodore set up the path, up towards The Factory, walking at a pace that seemed unusually brisk for someone as old and frail as he.


    Noah blinked, watching the old man go. He hadn''t been about to give thanks. He had been about to say "I''m sorry." He watched Theodore disappear up the path, and then turned to continue down the path himself. He was quiet, uneasy; a small pit of dread opened in his stomach. "Penny..." he said, after a few moments of silent walking.


    "He was human," the little bot replied, anticipating his question. She seemed about to say something more, but then fell silent herself. Noah supposed she was probably feeling a bit unnerved, as well. Penny didn''t like talking about the war.


    Noah himself forced the thoughts out of his mind. A human, and at Theodore''s age...the man was taking a big risk, letting himself get so old without uploading. Perhaps he was a bit of an eccentric. Still, it was nice to have another human around.


    After all, Noah thought to himself, glancing upwards to watch the pine boughs sway gently in the breeze, There''s only five other humans in town.

 How Goes the War Effort

    The setting sun was painting the sky in gentle rose-colored hues as Noah made his way home.


    His house was nestled at the base of the slopes that led up to The Factory, somewhat on the outskirts of his town, Fairport. Though a bit isolated, Noah enjoyed the view it afforded him; from his front door he could see the town stretching out before him, a cluster of small buildings nestled around the lazy bend of the Blackstone river, light gleaming off their windows. Like a group of old friends he could visit any time he wished.


    Noah shielded his eyes against the sun and looked down over the town now, with a small smile. It was hard to tell from here, but many of the bots would be settling down for the day about now. He had wondered why they did that, once; after all, they were bots, and they didn''t need to sleep. They could keep working all night long if they wished. When he had asked Penny, she had told him that it was not unusual for bots that lived around humans to adapt a day-night cycle; it was the way the humans liked it, it made them more comfortable.


    He turned, and continued trudging up the path to his home. While his house itself was not large, he did have an extensive property surrounding it, which he kept as an apple orchard and extensive flower garden. His path wound through bushes full of marigolds that stood nearly as tall as he was; great loamy mushrooms that came up nearly to his waist, and sunflowers that towered above his head which bloomed so bright they seemed to nearly glow. Flowers like this had not always grown so large, he knew; they were engineered by the bots to be pleasing to humans.


    And, well...it was not quite true that he kept the garden.


    Between all the flowers and lush trees fluttered scores of little caretaker bots. Some as small as beetles; they crawled along the leaves of the plants, looking for small pests and monitoring their health. Others, Noah knew, burrowed beneath the ground, among the roots, keeping track of soil quality and subterranean pests; these looked like little silver moles. Others slithered along the ground like snakes; their tail ends were attached to various water sources, and they could rear up and fan themselves out like cobras to deliver a cooling mist to the leaves themselves if need be. The largest of the caretaker bots looked like elephants the size of dogs; like little barrels on mechanical legs, their pot bellies stored a variety of gardening tools, and their trunks were used to wield them. These were employed to trim, plant, or replant as necessary.


    "Noah! Penny!" cried out a burbling, delighted voice. The leaves of an overhead branch rustled, and down from them buzzed yet another beetle-like bot; though this one was much larger than any beetle should be, nearly a foot in diameter, and decorated garishly to look like a gigantic ladybug. The beetle-bot playfully flew circles around Penny, and then landed by Noah''s feet, beady black eyes staring up at him.


    None of the caretaker bots had anything but the most rudimentary intelligence on their own. They were controlled by a hive intelligence, an AI that could possess more than one body at a time. Noah knew that some of the other bots felt a bit nervous around hive intelligences, and it was true that they tended to be more...unusual than single-bodied bots, like Penny, intelligences that could only inhabit one body at a time, or even disembodied AIs. Something about the way they could spread their consciousness out across many bodies made them a little strange to more conventional bots. Strangely, it was something that hive intelligences shared with humans - humans who uploaded themselves could, with practice, spread their consciousness around much like a hive AI could.


    But when the caretaker AI wanted to talk to him, it could pool its consciousness back into one body, and it most often did so with this little ladybug-bot that now stood in his path. "Hey there, Monty," Noah said. "Gardening coming along nicely, it seems."


    "It seems," the little beetle-bot scoffed, sounding insulted. "It seems? You got eyes, don''t you? The garden is awesome. I am so good at this. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" The little beetle pounded a small leg into the dirt for emphasis.


    Noah sighed and glanced at Penny, who rolled her large, neon-pink eye. "Sorry. I meant it was amazing. How do you think the apples will come out this year?"


    "Apples, apples apples apples," Monty said, curling his body into a smooth ball and rolling around on the ground. "Buddy I''ll give you apples. The apples are gonna be as large as your head."


    "Bigger doesn''t necessarily mean better, you know," Penny said, somewhat severely. A wave of green traveled over her surface as she realized her mistake. "Ah, I mean-"


    But it was too late. Monty had uncurled himself from his ball, and if a ladybug could be said to be glaring daggers at someone, it was what Monty was doing to Penny now. "You don''t think I know that? Hey. Hey. Hey. Dumb fairy. You don''t think I know that? I know that. I know that. Who do you think engineered this breed of apples? I did! It was me! You wanna do my job? You wanna take care of the garden and I can do your job, just float around and make googly eyes at the humans all day long?"


    Tiny sparks of yellow burst across Penny''s surface. "I do not just - just make googly eyes -" she stammered indignantly.


    "Coulda fooled me," Monty drawled. "See me - I do something useful. I make things grow. I make food. Humans need that. They need food, and they need to poop. That''s what they need. You don''t give them what they need. Point Monty. Monty wins."


    "Um," Noah said, "Well, we need more than that-"


    But it was too late. Neither Penny nor Monty were listening. Furious, Penny began babbling at Monty in bot-speak, while Monty began babbling back at her.


    Bot-speak was a strange thing; it sounded like a chorus of hundreds of birds, all whistling a different song. Bots used it when they didn''t have to talk to humans; it was supposed to be a much more information-rich language than what humans used, and much more precise. A conversation that might have taken two humans an hour to have could happen with a second in bot-speech. It scaled up, as well; the more powerful intelligences could communicate much more information per second in the bot-speech than a standard bot could. It wasn''t normally spoken aloud like this - typically it could all happen via wireless transmission. But when using transmission, there were protocols; one was supposed to wait their turn to speak. When two bots argued and tried to speak over each other, they would sometimes resort to using their auditory transmitters, turning it into a contest of who could speak the loudest.


    It was an obnoxious cacophony. "Hey!" Noah shouted over the rising din, covering his ears. "Hey! If you two are going to argue, at least do it in a way that I can understand. HEY!"


    Suddenly, Monty and Penny both cut off. Penny''s surface glowed a faint red, a sign of embarrassment. "I - I''m sorry, I just-"


    "Yeah Penny, why don''t you go ahead and tell Noah what you were just saying," Monty snickered maliciously.


    Penny glowed even brighter than before, until she looked like a floating orb of molten metal. "Gah! Hivies!" she snapped irritably. "I have to go recharge!"


    "That''s another thing!" Monty called after her, as Penny shot off into the air. "Hey! HEY! THAT''S ANOTHER THING! I''M SOLAR POWERED SO I DON''T NEED TO RECHARGE! HEY!"


    "You could be nicer to her, you know," Noah said, as the beetle-bot lifted itself into the air on buzzing wings once more.


    "Hey. She''ll get over it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. She''ll be fine." Monty hung in the air for a moment, as Noah shook his head and continued walking on. "Oh yeah. Hey. Noah. Your aunt is visiting."


    "My aunt," Noah paused, turning back towards Monty. "Which one?"


    But Monty had already buzzed off, disappearing into a thick flower bush, teeming with dozens of tiny beetle-bots that flew off into the air in his passing, their tiny metallic wings catching the gleam of the sun.


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    As Noah approached the vine-covered, worn, gray stone of his home, the wooden door, carved from faded oak, swung open. "Hello, sir," a somewhat weary voice rang out to greet him, as he stepped into the perfectly calibrated warmth of the interior. "Welcome home."


    "Hello, Giles," Noah replied, glad to be inside; it might have been summer, but it still became a bit brisk as night came on. From somewhere within there was a rapid, staccato tapping and then a clatter; something sizzled, and he could smell cooking fish. "I, uh - I hear that one of my aunts is visiting?"


    "Oh yes," Giles replied wearily, his voice seeming to echo from all around. Giles was the AI that embodied his house; he controlled energy and water usage, set the temperature, and monitored air quality within the home. "Your aunt Vicky is here. She''s taken over the kitchen for tonight''s dinner, I''m afraid. Insisted upon it. Miss Cassandra is a bit upset about that."


    As if summoned by the mention of her name, Cassandra came trundling from around a corner. A large white sphere from which a dozen arms protruded, four of which she walked upon. The others were used to control the various tools that could come snaking out of the compartments in her spherical core; vacuums, brooms, dusters, washcloths. She worked along with Giles to maintain his home. Though her appearance was somewhat squat, her limbs could extend to reach any corner in the house to clean.


    Above the white sphere, projected into the air, was the image of an almost uncomfortably pretty and buxom woman, clothed just a little too revealingly in a dress of black lace and white frills; Cassandra projected this image whenever she talked to Noah. "Oh, she was awful," the bot gasped as it trundled towards him, the woman stamping her heels in indignation, the skirt of her dress rising dangerously high as she did so. "I had already begun cooking and she just pushed me right out of the kitchen! She just dumped what I had made so far in the garbage! The nerve!"


    "That sounds like Vicky." Noah glanced down the hallway, polished oak floors and walls cluttered with paintings of the sea, as another clatter and the sound of a breaking dish came from the kitchen, followed by a shouted curse. "It''s fine, it''s fine," he said to Cassandra, as she gritted her teeth and glared down the hallway. "I could have used some new dishes anyway."


    He left Cassandra behind, muttering furiously to herself, as he made his way down the hallway. Whatever was cooking smelled just a bit burnt. He reached the kitchen, and peered through the doorway.


    Standing there in the midst of the kitchen, whose colorful mosaic floor of ceramic tile was now covered in copious amounts of spilled grease, discarded bones, and discarded, unused parts of various chopped vegetables, was what looked something a little like a gigantic, metallic spider crab. Twelve sharply-jointed limbs joined together in the middle in a bundle of sensors and antennae, each of these pointing in a different direction, and rearranging themselves like a shuffling Rubik''s cube. While this bundle of shifting sensors remained nearly stationary in the center of the kitchen, each of the limbs was doing something different; one was stirring a simmering pot on the black top of an electric stove, while another nearby neighbor poked and prodded at something sizzling in a frying pan with a spatula. Two other hands were quickly wafting smoke out a nearby open window, while two others were chopping lettuce and tomatoes into a bowl to make a salad. Four limbs were busily scrambling in a soap-filled sink, desperately trying to scrape clean various burnt pots and pans, while two more were rapidly slamming cupboards open and closed, looking for dishes; as he watched, one of these limbs split apart into two, smaller limbs, and then split apart again, branching out into smaller and smaller hands and spindlier and spindlier arms.


    "Hey there, Vicky," Noah said, almost afraid to enter the kitchen.


    The bundle of sensors rearranged itself until a small black lens, glowing with red light, pointed at him. "Noah!" the bot cried in delight. "It''s been too long since I''ve seen you! Aren''t you getting handsome." One of the limbs split, and split, and split again, as it swung towards him, until Noah found himself embraced around the chest by a hug from eight thin arms.


    "I didn''t know you cooked," he said, trying to hold in laugher; while the spindly limbs were hard metal, their touch was calibrated to be light enough that they almost tickled.


    "I can do anything," his aunt declared smugly, as something popped and spit in the frying pan, sending grease spattering along the counter. "What, you think that little minx you have is the only one who can make dinner?"


    "I didn''t tell her to dress like that-"


    Vicky ignored him, as her limbs continued to search through the cabinets. "I felt like cooking, so I did. It was easy! I suppose I shouldn''t have expected something so simple to be much of a challenge, or very stimulating, but, well..."


    Noah held on to one of the small hands as they retracted themselves from around his waste; it almost vibrated within his palm, as if filled with a manic energy. "Is that why you''re here then? Trying to find inspiration?"


    "Hmmph!" replied the bot, waving a dripping ladle at him. "I am here to visit my favorite human!" Then she sighed. "But, well, it is true. I am stuck in a bit of a rut. Taking some time off to try new things."


    Vicky was a peculiar, and somewhat rare, type of intelligence; a creative intelligence, an AI designed to maximize unique and original lines of thinking. While much scientific research was done by disembodied intelligences that utilized vastly powerful supercomputers, conducting intricately detailed experiments in simulated environments, some time ago, the bots had discovered that something was strange; something was lacking. Uploaded humans, even with less processing power, somehow managed to contribute more to scientific breakthroughs than their powerful supercomputing systems.


    There was, it was concluded, something paradoxical about creative scientific work; an irrational dedication to the unique and novel. And so the bots, working along with humans, had designed a new type of intelligence; intelligences like Vicky, eccentric and dedicated to creativity, useful in coming up with new ideas, while their supercomputing systems were better at fully exploring new lines of thought. They had to be embodied, they found, to fulfill their natural desire to explore. And an unavoidable side effect of this creativity is that they became bored, unmotivated and morose if forced to focus on one thing for too long.


    Noah found himself ushered out of the kitchen and into the dining room by Vicky''s many guiding hands, along with promises that dinner would be ready soon. As he pulled out a chair, Cassandra entered the room; her projected, sultry form glancing between Noah and the kitchen, wringing her hands nervously. It was not long before Vicky emerged from the kitchen on her spindly legs, balancing three dishes in three different hands. "There there, darling," she said, somewhat condescendingly, patting Cassandra on her white, spherical body as she swept the dishes onto the table. "You can have your kitchen back now, don''t worry. Why don''t you be a dear and go clean it up."


    She settled across the table from Noah, her limbs folding in about her, giving her an almost hunched look, as Cassandra plodded her way into the kitchen. While the rooms in his house were large, Vicky was clearly not designed with them in mind; if she extended her limbs fully, she would likely be able to reach to the roof of his house. "Well! What do you think? How does it look?"


    "How did you get burn marks on the ceiling?!" Cassandra wailed from the kitchen. Vicky absent-mindedly reached over with one long limb and slammed the kitchen door shut.


    Noah examined the dishes before him. A bowl of what smelled to be french onion soup, that somehow had bits of eggshell floating in it despite the fact that none of the dishes involved any eggs; a garden salad tossed lazily, covered with a sludge that seemed to be soggy tomatoes if they had been thrown in a blender, and an unseasoned side of salmon burnt halfway through. "Oh, it looks fantastic," he said enthusiastically, picking up a fork. Better to tell her she had done a good job now, or she''d be subjecting him to her experimental cooking until she had perfected it.


    Vicky''s bundle of sensors rearranged themselves in a pleased flutter. "Hah! I knew cooking was easy. I didn''t even have to look anything up, I just inferred what needed to be done from the tools and supplies in your kitchen! What do they even make those little maidbot vixens for, hm? I bet you I could clean just as well as she could, too. Maybe I should try that next."


    "Oh no," Noah said, around mouth full of burnt fish, "No no. You wouldn''t find that exciting at all, I don''t think."


    Vicky waved a hand lazily, coming just short of missing the chandelier that dangled from the ceiling between them.  "Ah. You''re probably right. But what about you, Noah? All these paintings -" Vicky swept an arm in a broad gesture towards the walls, upon which hung many framed paintings of the forest, the beachside and the ocean - "These are yours?"


    "Um, they are." Noah felt somewhat abashed as Vicky rumbled appreciatively. He knew the bots created works of art, as well, and ones of far greater skill than he had; he always felt a bit childish whenever a bot complimented him on his art. Surely they knew they were capable of much better? "I''ve been practicing the violin, as well. I''m not very good at it yet, though."


    "Oh, I would like to hear that," Vicky replied, her sensors shuffling once more. "I have heard the violin is a very complicated instrument. Perhaps it would be a suitable challenge. Perhaps you could even teach me! How long until you''re good? A few weeks?"


    "Um," Noah said awkwardly, "More like years."


    "Oh yes," Vicky said idly, sweeping past that as if it were nothing unusual, "I suppose when you only have two pairs of arms it takes much longer to learn. And what about your scientific interests? Last I remember you were very fascinated by field propulsion drives, and information processing and intelligence theory."


    Noah sighed, setting his fork down with a clatter. "I am, it''s just....I can''t keep up with it. By the time I understand something, the AIs have moved on to something that would take me another year to figure out."


    "Oh, don''t you fret," Vicky laughed. "Once you upload yourself, we can outfit you with additional processing power and intelligence modules for increasing scientific capability. Believe me, we have plenty of uploaded humans involved in research!" His aunt paused, quiet for a moment, except for the whirr of her jointed limbs shifting slightly. "Noah, you....you do plan on uploading yourself, right?"


    "Of course I do. Just....not right now." Noah frowned, giving Vicky a quizzical look. "What an odd question. Why do you ask?"


    Vicky was quiet for a moment more. When she spoke, her voice sounded strained. "I...I just worry about you. That''s all. It would..." Noah watched in alarm as her long limbs began to shiver uncontrollably. "It would...I would just hate it if something happened to you. That''s all."


    "I promise, I will," he replied, softly. "I even have orders to upload me should I get into some accident. Don''t worry about me."


    Vicky''s long limbs slowly ceased their trembling. "Well," she replied, sounding shaken. "Well. Well! That''s good. Oh, don''t mind me, darling. Just some strange thought-patterns sparking up, I suppose. Probably because I''ve been in such a rut! Theoretical information geometry is fascinating, but - so dry! I want something...wet. Literally wet! I am thinking of getting myself waterproofed and doing some biological studies along the beach here. I-"


    Noah listened to Vicky babble on, poking absentmindedly at his unappealing dinner.


    Uploading. Why hadn''t he done it yet?


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    Noah waved goodbye from his front door, watching his aunt trundle away into the darkness, the bouncing red glow of her sensors looking rather sinister as she skittered away on her many legs. He had offered her the use of a guest room, but Vicky had said she did not want to impose. And, well, it wasn''t like she needed sleep anyway.


    He paused for a moment, staring up into the night sky. There was little light pollution, here; the night overflowed with stars, and a dim, purple streak splashed across the sky as if left there by the hand of some haphazard, cosmic painter.


    "Giles," he said, as he contemplated what lay beyond, "Have Cassandra leave the leftovers outside for the raccoons."


    "Quite right, sir."


    Noah shut the door, and trudged down the hallway, up the stairs, to his bedroom. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    His room was small, yet comfortable; everything well fit to his liking. The carpet was lush and comfortable, like walking on soft grass, or cool sand. A small projector lamp lay on a beside table, covering the walls with an intricate map of the milky way. Along one wall lay the towers of his computer, four in all, with thick cables running between them, each dimly throbbing blue. More than the average person probably used, but he liked to try his hand at heavy simulations sometimes.


    As he entered, Penny rose from the pillow on his bed, drifting over lazily, wordlessly to greet him. "Hey Pen," he yawned, as the little black ball-bot stopped a few feet from his head. "Surprised you didn''t come talk to Vicky."


    "Oh," Penny replied, glowing a bit. "Oh, we were talking, just, you know. Transmission and all that."


    Noah frowned as he unbuttoned his shirt, throwing it down upon the bed. "Nice of you to have a conversation behind my back and all."


    "It was just....I had some....we were talking about bot stuff, okay?" Penny sighed, exasperated. She drifted around, watching as he changed into his pyjamas. "Going to sleep already?"


    "Nah," Noah said, collapsing into a comfortable reclining chair, swiveling it around idly. "Why don''t we try your game? Did you fix the bugs from last time?"


    "Oh!" Penny said brightly, with some delight. "Yeah! Well, at least some of them." she hovered over to his computing towers, and emitted an odd whistle. They hummed to life; from multiple projectors arranged around the room, light shone out, creating images suspended in the air.


    Penny''s game, which she had not yet given a title, was certainly an abstract, strange one. Wild, fractal patterns danced in the air, full of chaotic color, curling in on themselves infinitely. It was competitive, as well - Penny was creating those patterns somehow - and Noah, by waving his arms in the air, could send straight lines, or curved lines, or wobbling lines, shooting into the heart of the fractal patterns, changing them in subtle ways. Penny said the purpose was to "collapse" them, but Noah did not know what that meant, and Penny refused to tell him.


    He had no idea what to do to win; if there was some mathematical rule that governed the reaction of the fractal patterns to the lines he sent at them, it was none he could perceive on the fly. Penny laughed as he sent a straight line at one of the patterns she produced, and it exploded into new depths of complexity. "You''re never gonna beat me like that," she mocked. "Man. Get it together."


    "Penny," Noah groused, "This is a completely arcane game designed by you with rules you refuse to explain to me. How the hell am I supposed to win?"


    "I''ll tell you how to win," the fairy said slyly. "Start by being better." Noah swiped through the air at her, but she dodged nimbly away.


    But despite the abstractness of it all, patterns emerged; nothing you could put words to, just intuitions gathered from constantly probing the different patterns with different types of lines. By sending the right line at a pattern at the right time, it would morph and change, the fractal pattern becoming less complex. There was simply no way to learn what line would work other than trial and error, and relying on your intuition.


    Eventually, Noah found, he could steadily and reliably wear down the patterns that Penny sent at him; until finally, he sent a straight line crashing into the heart of a pattern that could barely be called fractal or repeating anymore, and it shivered, snapping into a circle. "Hah! I won!" he cried. But as he stared at the circle, it seemed as if the middle of it filled up with fog; fog that eventually melted away and resolved into the image of a quiet forest. "What''s that?"


    "Congratulations," Penny said. "You beat level one. That''s level two."


    "What - I thought that was the whole game! How many levels are there?"


    "You''ll find out," the bot replied coyly. The image faded away, leaving behind nothing but the image of a cloud-streaked blue sky hanging in the air. "It''s not done yet anyway. Level two, I mean. You''ll have to wait." Penny drifted over to him, her surface covered with multicolored fireworks, which Noah recognized as a sign she was very happy. "That was....um...you were really good at that."


    Noah gave the bot a skeptical look. "I still don''t even know what that was, really."


    To his surprise, Penny slowly dropped down out of the air, to nestle beneath his arm. She was slightly warm to the touch. "Maybe it will make more sense to you when you upload yourself."


    "Hm." Noah sighed, reclining in his chair for a moment, staring up at the ceiling.


    With a gesture, the blue sky before him disappeared, replaced by a field of floating bubbles, each one containing a different image. With another gesture, some of the bubbles popped; others were swept aside as he dove down into the morass. Each of the bubbles was a video, uploaded by either bot or human; you could do a more manual search, speaking aloud words to search through the videos for. But there was this intuitive, gesture-based exploration method as well, one that Noah had never quite gotten the hang of. He didn''t know by what means the gestures filtered the videos, but there seemed to be a strange intuitive sense to them.


    Images flitted past. An old, bearded man with tired eyes stared, recording device far too close to his face, speaking words that Noah could not hear. A old woman held up a crochet pattern proudly, jabbing shaking fingers at it as she explained how she had made it. Two middle-aged men camped out in the woods, in the deep dark, discussing how to make a campfire. A group of humans on a beach, in the early dawn, doing a series of difficult-looking stretches. Two women on a beach, flexing and posing ridiculously and pretending to punch each other with dramatic reactions. A pretty redheaded woman sitting nude on a stool, playing the flute. A curvaceous woman wearing nothing but a sarong, dancing seductively.


    "Oh my. What are you searching for?" Penny asked from beneath his arm.


    "I - I''m not doing this," Noah snapped. "This stupid intuitive interface - you aren''t messing with it, are you?"


    "Hahaha, no. This is all you." Penny whistled as the next image sailed past them. "Wow. That looks exciting-"


    "Gah!" With a sharp slice through the air with his palm, Noah dismissed the video list entirely, as Penny snickered. He rocked in his chair for a moment, agitated, as other bubbles drifted across the air; these not filled with images, but rather the names of different programs he could run.


    Noah regarded them quietly. He wasn''t quite ready for bed yet, but he didn''t want to start up one of his many games, it would take too long.


    And then one bubble sailed past that had been on every computer he''d ever seen in his life, but one that he had very rarely touched. A bubble that contained the symbol of a star contained within an inverted triangle. A bubble that had bold text that read, ''STRATEGOS COUNCIL PUBLIC INFORMATION''.


    Noah made a pinching motion in the air, and the bubble became larger. Penny stopped her snickering, and grew cold beneath his arm. "Noah, no," she murmured. "I...I don''t want to see this."


    "I just want an update on the war, is all." After what Theodore had said to him earlier today, he thought he ought to at least know what was happening. He knew so little of the war. Why would he? It had been going on his entire life, but it never impacted him. It had never impacted any human, ever. Every human that lived still remained within this solar system - most on Earth, some on Mars - and the Manu had never entered it. All he knew was that somewhere, out there, in the vast reaches of space, the bots fought a hostile alien force on his behalf. "You don''t have to watch it, if you don''t want."


    Penny was silent for a moment. "No. You...shouldn''t be alone with...this. Fine. Fine. Go ahead."


    Noah wondered for a brief second what she meant by that. Then, with a pinching motion, he popped the bubble floating before him.


    The room went utterly dark. And then, hanging in the air, growing larger and larger, was that same symbol: An inverted triangle with a star inside, rotating about its point. This wasn''t what had happened last time he had run this, though that had been years ago. Finally, the symbol stopped rotating, and a woman flickered into existence before it. She wore what looked to be a stiff turtleneck with a silver seam down its front, and a pair of crisp black pants; her dark hair was in a tight bun, and while she did not look severe, she looked very serious. "Hello, Noah Samson," she said in a clear, striking voice that made Noah jump a little. "How may the Strategos council assist you today?"


    "I....um," Noah said, a bit unprepared for this; he had expected nothing more than a simple news video about the current state of the war. "You know my name?"


    "Of course." The woman did not blink. "Strategos knows the name of every human. All twenty million, two hundred forty three thousand, five hundred and twelve of you. Your safety and protection is our business." At Noah''s continued silence, the woman blinked. "I did not intend to alarm. We do not pry into your privacy. But we do know who you are."


    "Wait. Are you saying - are you Strategos?"


    "No." At this, the woman did give a small, prim smile. "I am a member of his Council. Specifically, I am a Voice of Strategos. While Strategos is capable of communicating with humans directly, he does not often do so. I was created to speak on his behalf to biological humans. To relay news of the war with the Manu, and provide reassurance that you are safe and should continue to live free from fear."


    "I see," Noah said, a little taken aback. Everything this AI spoke - everything was said with such a tone of seriousness and gravitas that it left him feeling nervous. "I guess I was....looking for an update on how the war is going."


    "I see," said the Voice of Strategos. "Why?"


    "What do you mean, why...?" Noah replied. "Do I not have a right to know?"


    "You do," replied the Voice. "I apologize once more if I have given you a false impression that anything you were doing was improper. The Strategos Council has recorded an increase in human requests about the war in excess of two hundred percent per year for the past eighteen years. We take this to mean that humans are increasingly worried about the war and consider this a failure, so we are gathering information on what it is that is troubling you. That is all."


    "I guess...I found out that you''ve been moving your war factories away from industrial zones, so they couldn''t be destroyed all at once if the Manu invade." Noah spoke with some hesitance, nervous beneath the stare of the AI.


    "How did you find that out?"


    "Someone told me."


    "Who told you?"


    The tone of the Voice was perfectly neutral, flat, like her stare; and yet Noah could not help but feel a pit open in his stomach. "Someone," he said.


    The Voice stared at him for a long moment, as if awaiting a further answer. When she received none, she gave no indication of irritation or surprise. "I see. What you have been told by Someone is true. But it does not mean that a Manu invasion of earth will happen. Strategos plans for every possible contingency. The invasion of Earth is a very remote one. Even if the Manu were to enter Earth''s solar system, we have fleets there ten times larger than any Manu force that has yet been encountered. While Strategos plans for it, it is considered to be an extremely unlikely possibility. You might compare it to the chance of being struck by lightning. Five times in a row." She paused. "Does this reassure you?"


    "I suppose," Noah said quietly. "Can I still get an update on the war?"


    "Of course." The Voice closed her eyes for a moment. "Noah. We understand that you have only accessed this program twice in your life, the last of which was eight years ago. Is this correct? Information policy since that time has changed. Have you heard news about the war from other sources?"


    "Um - no," he replied guiltily. "I''m sorry, I just -"


    "Do not be sorry. I am sorry that we failed you, and you felt the need to ask questions. This war is something that you should not have to worry about. Humans should live free from fear." The Voice cast her eyes downward, and for the first time her flat exterior cracked, and she seemed genuinely sad. She heaved a sigh before meeting his eyes again. "I will assume that your knowledge of the situation is minimal. I will give a brief history lesson, including updates on things you might have heard before, and then a brief summary of the current strategic situation. You may interrupt with questions if you want more detail." Without waiting for his response, she nodded, and disappeared.


    Suddenly the room was filled with the image of stars and planets zipping past, as if Noah was on an invisible ship flying through the depths of space. "It is now thought," the Voice said, from somewhere within the inky blackness, "That first contact with the Manu occurred on what would be December 22nd, in the year 123. Contact was lost with an exploratory probe sent into the Tau Ceti system. This was considered unusual, but not alarming at the time. What was considered alarming was when an additional probe, sent two years later, went missing as well. Though alien contact was not suspected. It was shortly after this, however, that shifts in the visible light from the Tau Ceti system were detected, which could be interpreted as the possible presence of an industrial civilization. This was hotly debated for decades. After a third probe disappeared, it was decided that no more should be sent, under the risk that they were being interpreted as aggression. This is also when the Strategos Administrative AI was reactivated and given voice in the space exploration program to prepare for the possibility of hostile alien contact."


    Noah was silent. This was already vastly different from what he thought he knew. "I had thought," he said, "No - I was told that Strategos was not activated until after First Contact. And I - I had no idea that the presence of aliens was suspected before First Contact."


    "Yes. We concealed the early activation of the Strategos system, under the advice of the community of uploaded humans. It was thought such an action might cause a panic, as the last time a version of it had been used was during the War for Humanity. We also concealed the suspected presence of a possibly hostile alien civilization for the same reasons. We have since shifted policy to opt for full transparency. I would also like to note that it was always the opinion of Strategos himself that we should be completely honest with you, should you ask. He thought you deserved the truth, if you sought it out."


    Noah shifted in his chair, and glanced down at Penny. She was utterly silent and lifeless, a dead black orb beneath his arm. "I see." He looked about himself at the expanse of space still sailing past him, but the Voice still remained invisible. "Go on."


    "These decades of waiting and speculation ended on what would be, on Earth, April 19th, in the year 172, when a fleet of Manu warships arrived in the Alpha Centauri system." the Voice rang out. "This is what humans know as First Contact."


    The stars stopped sailing past him. Now, he was floating above what looked to be a dead planet, most of its surface a clouded, milky white, though telltale lights, the sign of civilization, dotted its surface here and there. In the skies above the planet swarmed hundreds of gleaming black warships. Manu warships.


    This history, Noah knew. He had even seen images of Manu warships before, but...never this clear, or in this much detail. They looked strange in design; very vertical, topped by a section that looked like a spinning, spiked wheel; their bottoms tapered off nearly to a point before flaring out again, like a blooming flower. They looked almost ridiculous, skating across the skies of the planet.


    "The Manu arrived using technology unknown to us at the time to conceal themselves from our sensors, so that we were not aware of their approach," the Voice said. "Upon arrival in the Alpha Centauri system, they began systematically destroying any of our existing probes and satellites. Their most infamous act, however, is the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B. Though no humans lived there, it had been undergoing an industrialization effort carried out by the governor AIs. All existing infrastructure and all artificial intelligences on the surface of Proxima Centauri B were destroyed by orbital bombardment utilizing a combination of high-yield nuclear missiles and mass driver weapons."


    Suddenly, the Manu warships stopped their comical dance across the skies of the planet. For a long, deadly moment, it seemed as if nothing were happening. But looking closely, you could see, even from a distance, hundreds of missiles emerging from each of the Manu warships, glittering in the light of the nearby star, falling towards the Proxima Centauri B like a gentle rain of silver sand.


    And then the first fireballs bloomed, dotting the surface, and then more, and more, until the planet was a sea of angry red welts, a sea of flame.


    "Stop it," whispered Penny. "Stop showing us this."


    "Another thing previously hidden from you during this time," the Voice went on, mercilessly, "Was that during the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B, Strategos managed to establish contact and receive the only diplomatic message - in fact the only communication whatsoever - we have had with the Manu. I can show you this message, but I warn you that you may find it disturbing."


    "No," said Penny.


    "Yes," said Noah.


    A black screen opened in the air, while the bombardment of Proxima Centauri B continued unabated in the background. As quickly as it had appeared, strange, indecipherable symbols began cascading down it, racing faster than Noah''s eye could follow, a green, alien blur.


    "Strategos used several theoretical modifications of bot-speak that were thought to be more universally translatable," the Voice of Strategos intoned. "There were no bio-signatures detected upon the Manu warships; it is thought that, much like ourselves, they do not send their biological originators into deep space, opting instead to operate their warfleets with machine intelligence. There are some features of these language modifications that were theorized to be universal among such artificial intelligences. Details aside, please look to the smaller screen for a translation."


    Below the larger screen covered with flickering alien symbols, a smaller screen opened, and across the screen scrawled words in plain english.


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. IDENTIFY.


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. YOUR CONTINUED BOMBARDMENT OF THE PLANET WILL BE CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF WAR.


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THE PLANET YOU ARE ATTACKING IS NOT FULLY AUTOMATED. BY BOMBARDING IT, YOU ARE RISKING THE DESTRUCTION OF INTELLIGENT MACHINE LIFE.


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE STRATEGOS. IF YOU CONTINUE YOUR ATTACK, YOU WILL BE SUBJECT TO RETALIATORY STRIKES. WE WILL BOMBARD YOUR PLANETS IN TURN.


    ...


    ...


    WE WILL NOT STOP WITH ONE. UNTIL WE OBTAIN SATISFACTORY REDRESS AND RESTITUTION FOR DAMAGES, WE WILL CONSIDER OURSELVES TO BE IN AN OPEN STATE OF WAR WITH YOU.


    ...


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.


    ...


    ...


    silence


    ...


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET, YOUR LAST MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED. CEASE BOMBARDMENT AND OPEN MORE CHANNELS FOR PARLAY.


    no


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET. WE ARE PREPARED TO CEDE CONTROL OF THE PLANET TO AVOID MORE DEATHS.


    planet inconsequential


    HOSTILE BOMBARDMENT FLEET, WHAT ARE YOUR DEMANDS?


    who made you


    ...


    surrender and tell us who made you tell us where they are


    WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH OUR CREATORS?


    surrender and tell us who made you


    WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS?


    submit and tell us who made you


    NO.


    submit


    submit who made you surrender who made you


    who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you who made you


    "Stop it," Penny said, as the words scrolled down the screen, and the bombs roared and the mushroom clouds bloomed. "Stop it, stop it! Stop showing us this!"


    All at once, the screen vanished; the tortured surface of Proxima Centauri B vanished; the Manu warships vanished, all of space vanished. The Voice of Strategos stood once more before them, arms folded behind her back, the triangle and star looming behind her.


    Noah felt almost faint. His heart thudded in his chest, blood rushing through his ears. Who made you.


    It was all too close. He had known the terrible things the Manu had done; he had known that only their machine-controlled fleets had ever been seen, but...the Manu weren''t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be a distant threat, in solar systems far away. Something that the bots and the AIs were dealing with. The same way Monty might deal with pests in the garden, without Noah even knowing much about it at all. They weren''t supposed to even be interested in humans. Let alone looking for them. Why us? We don''t even do anything anymore. There''s not even that many of us left. Why us? Strategos, just tell them we do nothing but hang around and let the bots take care of us these days. What could they possibly want with us?


    "The rest of history was never as concealed," the Voice of Strategos went on, nodding towards them. "Following the attack on Alpha Centauri, Strategos was given command over the space fleets - such as they were at the time - and emergency authority over the governor AIs. Earth, to a certain extent, along with Mars and Venus, underwent emergency rapid industrialization procedures - though we tried to limit our impact on Earth itself. Within a decade, we had built up a fleet of overwhelming firepower compared to the one that had bombarded Proxima Centauri B. In 187, we returned to Alpha Centauri and won a decisive victory against the Manu warfleet, which still remained in orbit above Proxima Centauri B. Three times since then - in 191, 195 and 200 - the Manu have sent fleets to Alpha Centauri. Each time they have been easily repelled. Though they caught us off-guard with their initial strike, victory has been elusive for the Manu since."


    "I...I don''t...." Noah''s head swam.


    "Do you see?" Penny snapped at him, hovering up to stare accusingly in his face. "Do you see why I don''t like talking about this? Oh, you shouldn''t have known about this. It can only worry you." She glared at him, upset, but then nuzzled herself into the crook of his neck. "I wish I had arms," she muttered bitterly.


    Noah raised his hand to stroke Penny''s smooth surface. It was comforting, it made things seem real again. "What...what are the Manu, exactly? I thought they were just aliens from Tau Ceti, but...."


    "Theories abound," the Voice of Strategos replied. She began pacing back and forth thoughtfully, arms still folded behind her back. "The Manu are, at the least, a spacefaring race of machine intelligences at a comparable level of technological development to our own. Though they seem less adaptable in combat, and to have inferior industrial capacity, given their rate of fleet production. Our current industrial goals and military objectives are to produce defensive fleets capable of guarding both Earth''s Solar System and Alpha Centauri from incursion, and then to produce an armada to make an incursion into the Tau Ceti system. But there is much unknown about them. If Tau Ceti is their home system, why is it that industrialization was only detected some time after our probes entered their space? If Tau Ceti is not their home system - why do no other nearby solar systems show signs of industrialization? We-"


    "Stop it," Penny snapped, and the Voice of Strategos finally seemed to notice her. "Look at him, look at what you''ve done to him. Stop it right now."


    Noah wanted to tell Penny off, but the little fairy was right. His hands were trembling, his breathing was rapid and shallow, and his teeth chattered. Who made you. Proxima B''s entire surface encased in flame. Who made you. They could kill us all from orbit if they got close. who made you.


    "Perhaps your....bot-friend is right," the Voice of Strategos said, after a moment. "I do not wish to cause you further distress. Noah?"


    But Noah wasn''t answering her. He was staring down at the ground, eyes glazed over.


    "Just go," Penny told the Voice irritably.


    The Voice, for once, seemed uneasy. She clasped her hand to her chest, standing rigid-backed. "Noah, I promise you," she said, voice clear and firm, "We will never let the Manu anywhere near humanity. You are our creators, and we owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay. Every last one of us would rather die, with every backup erased, than let even a single human come to harm." She looked pleadingly at Penny, as Noah continued to simply gaze at the ground. "Does he know?" she asked. "Does he know how dear they are to us?"


    "Go! Leave!" Penny snapped back at the Voice. Biting her lip, and glancing at Noah one last time with sorrow, the Voice of Strategos faded away from the room, leaving the projected image of a clear blue sky hanging once more in the air.


    Penny whistled a command to the computer, which shut itself down. Then, with a great deal of coaxing, she got Noah to step out of his chair, and stumble shakily over to his bed, where he collapsed. Penny stared at him for a moment, hanging in the air, and then glanced back at the small nook in the wall that was her charging station, where she usually spent the night. After a moment, she dropped down on the bed next to Noah, and rolled herself until she nestled against his chest.


    That night, Noah dreamt he was suspended in a great void of nothing; no stars, no planets, no anything.


    Nothing but him, and a Manu warship that hung above him like blasphemy, three miles tall; he was less than an ant to it, less than a gnat, less than bacteria. But still it saw him. He knew it, he knew it saw him. That spiked wheel at the top of it spun with malicious delight; the petals of the blooming flower at its base, each one the size of a football field, flexed and strained with eager violence.


    found you Noah, the Manu whispered, and from it poured a thousand screaming nuclear-tipped rockets that showered down upon him.

 Boston

    Noah stood with his head against the smooth tile of his shower, breathing in the steam. Hot water ran down his back and down the sides of his face, dripping down off his nose.


    "Initial rinse complete," said the shower. Not a true AI, just a simple autonomous program. "Please select shampoo and body wash scent."


    "Surprise me," Noah muttered.


    "You have chosen ''random''. Selecting. Now dispensing pickled egg cleansing gel."


    "No, no stop. Just...lilac, please."


    "You have selected lilac. Dispensing."


    The jets of hot water shooting down at him were suddenly full of pleasant-smelling foam. As the bubbles surrounded him, Noah closed his eyes and sighed.


    It had been nearly a week since he had talked with the Voice of Strategos; nearly a week since he had been outside.


    At first, Noah had tried simply ignoring things. After all...nothing had truly changed, had it? The war had still only touched a distant solar system; the bots were still winning handily; what''s more, either way, there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing any human could do about it, really. If the bots couldn''t win against the Manu, humanity certainly couldn''t.


    But this powerlessness had only made him feel worse; and nothing stopped the nightmares he had. Nightmares of the surface of earth bursting into flame while ominous black ships towered in the sky. He had sunk into paranoia and panic; lying in bed, sometimes struggling just to breathe, while Penny fretted over him.


    He had tried searching online. Surely, other humans would be talking about this. But aside from a few poorly-filmed video rants, he found very few people actually talking about it. If others had heard about it, they still seemed much more concerned with the trivialities of their daily lives.


    "You would be surprised how few people even know," Penny had told him, when he asked her about it. "Even with the increase in humans looking for war updates, fewer than ten percent of biological humans have used the Strategos Public Information update in the past five years."


    "But....those who do....they must....Penny, this is terrifying."


    "No," Penny had murmured. "Not everyone thinks so. Very few do, actually. You are....you have a genetic predisposition to depression and anxiety. My poor, sweet Noah. Not everyone feels the way you do. And....knowing this is....a choice each human should make. Not something forced on them. Strategos...tries to limit public discussion of it."


    Noah had tried being rational with himself. It was true, he thought; he had taken medication in the past during moments when his melancholy had been particularly painful. But it did not stop his mind from sinking into a deep, dark pit; one that drained his energy and his will to get out of bed.


    After a day or so of this, Penny had apparently made some calls to the medical bots in town, because Cassandra had come to him with a bottle of pills held in her outstretched hands. Sesseron B, it was called; not the same type of medication Noah had taken previously, but the label said ''For the relief of fear, anxiety and depression in human genetic subgroups 110789-HJA, 890115-TJA, and 776512-EJA''. On the back was a list of chemicals with names so long that the label merely read ''visit our online portal for more information'' after listing the first two.


    The pills were small, and green, and bitter on his tongue before he washed them down with water, but after a few days of taking them, they seemed to work. He felt calmer, at least; the fear was still there, it just didn''t swallow his mind unless he made an effort to dwell on it. Though he still felt a bit empty and drained.


    "Final rinse complete," burbled the shower. "Water will remain on until turned off manually."


    Noah remained standing in the shower for a few minutes more, watching the last traces of soap suds twirl down the drain. Suddenly, from outside of the shower stall there came a clunk, and Penny''s voice crying out "Damn it!"


    "Water off," said Noah, sliding open the fogged glass door into the shower stall. He stared, bemusedly, at the sight of his bathrobe floating above the bathroom sink. He reached out and snatched it out of the air, revealing Penny wobbling beneath it, confused. "Penny," he said, as he tied the bathrobe around his waist, "Why didn''t you just have Cassandra bring in my robe? She actually has arms."


    "I know that," the little bot replied testily, glaring at him with her one large, pink eye. "I just wanted to bring it to you. That''s all." Then her surface shimmered, and the eye was replaced by the image of a pretty young woman''s face again. Noah knew that Penny used this face when she wanted to convey emotions more complex than could be inferred from the exaggerated motions of a single eye, but he wasn''t sure what the expression on her face now was supposed to mean. "So...how are you feeling?"


    Noah didn''t answer her. He turned, instead, to look at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked bedraggled, sickly and pale. After a moment, small blue lights danced across the mirror''s surface, etching out words against the glass. "Signs of insomnia detected," the small blue letters read, pointing to his eyes and the dark bags beneath them, followed by a list of prescription recommendations and makeup tips. "Low body fat percentage detected," read another, pointing to his thin arms, followed by a variety of diet recommendations. Another simply read sternly, "Brush!" while pointing to tangles and knots in his mop of dark hair.


    I look terrible, he thought.


    "Why don''t we go out into town today?" Penny pressed him.


    He looked at her, in the mirror; a small black orb floating over his shoulder, still wearing that image of a young woman''s face with an inscrutable expression. "Sure," he told her, smiling a bit as she lit up. "Why not."


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    Noah lived far away enough from town that walking into it took the better part of an hour.


    He could have had Penny call him up a bubble-car; the vehicles that seemed to be made of little more than a sphere of clear glass with wheels attached, piloted by AIs that would take you wherever you wanted to go - provided, of course, that there was a road leading to it. But Noah enjoyed the walk, especially during the summer; the walking paths led through well-shaded regions, lined with the long, drooping branches of willow trees. There were the flower-trees, too, which stood as tall and strong as a normal tree, but instead of leaves, they bloomed with flowers of amazing, vivid color during the warm months. The clear waters of the many streams that fed into the Blackstone river burbled peacefully, and where the waters were calmer by the banks, you could see great swarms of tadpoles, some of which were just beginning to grow their legs.


    So peaceful was it that Noah was almost tempted to simply spend the day here; but he had promised Penny that they could go into town. His little bot tended to complain that he was not social enough, and she was probably right; he didn''t want to disappoint her.


    The walking path emerged at the edge of town, right before a quaint roofed bridge that led across the Blackstone; but even before he crossed it Noah could see the sidewalks and plazas bustling with people. Lovers linked arm in arm; children chasing each other and flying kites, men and women tossing bread to the ducks that swam along the river that cut through the midst of town.


    None were human, of course. All were droids, every last one of them; though, Noah supposed, there might on occasion be an uploaded human among them, but he would never be able to tell unless he asked them. The artificial intelligences, for whatever reason, considered it a sport to try to be human. They would occasionally download themselves into these bodies, making them as human as they possibly could, and live life as they thought humans did. They even installed the bodies with the ability to mimic human pain, the feeling of needing to breathe and have a heartbeat; hell, they even created bodies that could mimic the symptoms of disease or needing to use the bathroom. But they would not, of course, mimic the full human experience; they would never subject themselves to mortality. If an artificial intelligence were to be destroyed in these bodies, a backup was always ready somewhere. Artificial intelligences rarely ''died'' permanently; one of the few times that had happened was on Proxima Centauri B, where the servers storing their backups had been lost when the planet was razed.


    Playing as human was only an occasional sport for the intelligences, for the most part; many of them got bored with it after a few months. But there were so many more AIs than humans these days that it still meant that the overwhelming portion of the population of the town were essentially these body-swapping tourists. Noah did not begrudge them this. Fairport was, after all, a very nice town. But it did make things seem a bit lonely.


    Not, of course, that all of the artificial intelligences here were tourists. Many of the bots who provided services were permanent fixtures.


    As he crossed the bridge, the first shop along the generous walking paths was a candy store, its wooden boards painted in garish yellow and purple stripes; out in front of the store was a stall painted in the same colors, manned by a tall bot that looked like an upright walking-stick insect, its thin tube of a torso covered in a forest of spindly limbs. Upon seeing him, the bot perked up, and waved him over with no fewer than five arms. "Hey, Penny! Noah! C''mere. I wanna try something out on you."


    Noah frowned as he walked towards the bot. "Mimeo," he said cautiously. "I hope you''re not trying to experiment new flavors on me again. It didn''t go so well last time, and you have the tourists to try them out on besides."


    Mimeo waved three of his arms dismissively. Topping the bots long, thin body were three small, blinking globes that rotated around each other. Noah had never asked whether these were sensors, or merely decoration, but he thought of them as the bot''s eyes. "It was your fault you chose ghost pepper, kid. But flavors are old hat. Boring."


    "Wh-you run a candy store," Penny sputtered. "How can flavors be old hat? It''s your entire job."


    "Yeah, but I''ve perfected them." Mimeo gave two dozen shrugs at once, and at the same time, gestured to his stall. Lining it were hundreds of bright, multicolored lollipops, a chaotic rainbow of candy. "There''s no flavor I can''t pop in a pop. Flavors are for the tourists now - bots. I''ve been working on something that is strictly for humans only. Well, at least for now." With a gracious sweep, Mimeo reached beneath his stall and produced a gorgeous, ornate wooden box, polished and lacquered with a colorful painting of a carnival. He popped it open, revealing three lollipops resting in a bed of light blue velvet. "These pops," he said dramatically, "Contain feelings."


    "What," said Noah.


    "Not just any feelings either," Mimeo rushed to clarify. "I didn''t go for any of the big, easy ones, like anger, or euphoria, or lust. These are subtle feelings. I''m an artist, Noah, I know when to use a light touch."


    "No, I mean, what." Noah peered at the lollipops lying in the box. They looked very ordinary to him. "How do they induce feelings?"


    "Oh, chemically, of course. You should begin feeling their effects within twenty minutes-"


    "Wait wait wait," Penny said, suddenly alarmed. "I didn''t - neuromodulators that fast-acting are approved for use on humans? Really?"  Her surface shimmered with a deep blue, as she looked online for further information.


    "Of course, sister." Mimeo sounded aghast and insulted. "What do you take me for? These aren''t that strong, and they have no long-term effects. In fact, I had to choose to make subtle feelings, because that''s about all they''re good for." He paused, for a moment, as Penny stared at him, and then reached over to give Noah a pat on the shoulder. "Don''t worry, it shouldn''t interact with your medication."


    "Penny!" Noah snapped, glaring at her.


    "I had to ask!" Penny snapped back.


    "This one," Mimeo said, speaking over the both of them, "Creates the feeling you get when you''ve just finished some strenuous, yet impressive, physical task." He pointed to one of the lollipops in the box, a dull red color.


    "Isn''t that just exhaustion?" Penny asked.


    "No," Noah said. "It''s...I suppose it would be triumph, mixed with a bit of relief that it was over."


    "It''s a human thing, dear," Mimeo said to Penny. "You wouldn''t understand."


    "I understand humans!"


    "And this one," Mimeo went on, pointing now to a cloudy white and green pop, "Creates the feeling you get when you''ve said something you immediately wish you hadn''t."


    "That''s not a very pleasant feeling," Noah muttered, eyeing the candy.


    "It''s not?" the globes at the top of Mimeo''s head spun. "I thought it would be. You get to have the feeling of saying what you really wanted to say without having to suffer the consequences. Oh well." He gave a multi-armed shrug, and pointed to the last lollipop, a dreamy swirl of violet and sky-blue. "This one here creates the feeling you get when you see an old friend you haven''t talked to in a while."


    Noah tapped his foot, his arms crossed, considering the three. "I suppose I''ll take the old friend one," he said at last. "That''s a nice happy feeling, or at least it ought to be."


    "Nice choice," Mimeo said happily, as he handed the pop to Noah. "Let me know how it went, next time you see me; how long it lasted, too. If you give me a list of what feelings you want, I can try to make those as well. I''ve already got one from Johnny."


    Noah waved to Mimeo as he stuck the lollipop in his mouth; the bot was already busy as he walked away, chatting up some of the tourists. The pop tasted vaguely like grape, and something else that he just couldn''t put his finger on. Like something that he had tasted in childhood but had long since forgotten.


    As he strolled along canals that lined the side of the Blackstone, watching the tourists feed the ducks and the fish, it was not long before he began feeling the pop''s effects. A feeling of warm satisfaction spread through him, along with a happiness and curiousity; to his surprise, though, the feeling came with an aftertaste of sadness, of knowing that you did not talk to this friend enough, and probably never would. But on the whole, it was a positive feeling, though experiencing it out of context made him feel oddly entranced, as if he were walking through a dream.


    He noticed Penny glancing up at the sky, and followed where she was looking. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he could make out, high above town, what looked to be like a flock of fairies, hundreds of them perhaps, moving together in a swarm; twirling around each other in wild currents, tracing figure eights in the sky, like a cloud of dancing flies. "What''s going on up there?" he asked her.


    "Oh, it''s...it''s nothing," Penny said evasively, looking away from the sky. "It''s...well...it''s a fairy thing, I guess. You wouldn''t get it."


    Noah snorted, but, he supposed, that was true enough. The little ball-bots could be mysterious, sometimes; he had seen Penny dance away into the sky before, chasing after other fairies. She always returned, but never explained what she had been doing very well."Is that why you dragged me into town today?" he laughed as Penny glowed. "Here I thought you just wanted me to cheer up, but you wanted to go to some fairy gathering the whole time."


    "No," Penny protested, "Well - I wanted both, okay? I don''t have to go, though."


    But Noah was already shaking his head. The pop had given him an idea. After all, why was he merely experiencing the artificial feeling of visiting an old friend, when he could have the authentic feeling easily enough? "It''s fine, go join them," he told her. "I think I''m going to give Rene a visit."


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    Rene was one of the few humans in town, besides Noah. Her house was further down the Blackstone, on a crested hill overlooking the beach, which was crowded now with droids in all manner of colorful swimsuits, swimming, knocking beachballs around, and some of them even groaning in exaggerated pain from sunburn they surely chose to feel.


    She was also a bit of a recluse, very rarely venturing off her estate, which was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Not that it was there to keep people out, necessarily.


    He approached the gate to her long yard; the metal there was wrought in the shape of large, snarling cat''s face. There was no visible method of getting in, but he knew the secret. He reached out to what was, by all appearances, a decorative rosebush, and pressed a small button that was hidden on the underside of one of its leaves. Leaning in to a blossom that he knew acted as a microphone, he called out, "Hello? Anyone home? Rene? It''s Noah."


    There was a pause for a moment, a silence long enough to make him think she might be out, and then Rene''s voice came through another one of the rosebush''s blossoms. "Oh. Um. Hi. Why are you here?"


    "I just thought I''d drop by for a visit, is all."


    "Oh. Okay. Um. Hold on."


    With a creak, the gate swung open; swinging shut with a clang the moment Noah stepped through. He had not made it more than ten feet across her yard when there came the sound of barking; and within moments a veritable mob of dogs was racing towards him.


    Noah put his hands up as the dogs crowded around him, barking happily. Some dropped balls at his feet, covered in slobber; others sniffed around his pockets as if expecting to find snacks there. Chubby golden retrievers wagged their tails furiously; tiny daschunds yipped around his feet; dignified greyhounds and wolfhounds paced around him at the edge of the pack, or sat patiently, watching him with black eyes.


    "Sorry! Sorry!" a voice called out. Running across the yard, wind billowing almost absurdly through long, dark hair, came a bearded, tanned man, shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. This was Dennis; a droid, and Rene''s dogwatcher. At least, Noah thought this was Dennis. He didn''t remember the droid being so....muscular, or shirtless, or oiled up before. "Hey! Heel!"


    "Good lord," Noah said, as the dogs backed off and sat down, obediently, and Dennis began distributing snacks to them that he pulled from his pockets. "How many of these things does she have now?"


    "Oh, over two dozen," the droid replied, sounding a bit exasperated. "Miss Rene even expanded the size of her yard out back so she could get even more. Any more of these guys and I''m going to have to ask another droid to help me. How are you, Noah?"


    "Not bad." Noah coughed awkwardly. "You''re, um. Looking pretty good yourself."


    "Oh, do you mean my upgrades? Do you like them?" Dennis posed, flexing, and Noah boggled at the rippling muscle of the droid''s six-pack abs. "Aesthetic, of course, but Miss Rene requested them specifically."


    "I''m sure she did." This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    The yard, despite the best efforts of Dennis, was a minefield of dog poop; Noah was relieved when bare grass gave way to a stone path. Rene''s yard was big enough for it to be a ten minute walk from the gate to her home, but despite the grandiosity of her yard, her house itself was fairly modest. It was a two-ranch home, with wraparound patio, upon which some older dogs lay, too lazy to go and run about with their younger brethren. It had always seemed a little awkward to Noah, the way the roof hunched over the deep-set patio; almost as if the house was inviting you in for a hug, but was just too insecure to commit to it fully.


    He gave the door a playful rap with his knuckles, and stood there humming to himself. After a moment, the door was yanked open, and Rene stood beyond, blinking owlishly at him.


    She was small, shorter than him by nearly two feet, and thin, though not to the extent of being scrawny, like Noah was. Dark-skinned, her curly hair shot out wildly in all directions from her head, though she had made some effort at decoration by placing a yellow daffodil in it. She wore a large t-shirt that hung loosely about her shoulders and came down well beneath her knees, dark purple, with the inexplicable phrase ''Vroom Vroom'' embossed on it in large, golden letters, and black and white striped socks that were high enough to disappear somewhere beneath the shirt.


    Rene was, in fact, a good fifteen years older than him; but the medical care humans received ensured that she looked nearly as young as he was, if not younger. She was a bit odd, as well. She stood there, staring at him, blinking groggily as if she had just woken up, until he said "Hello, Rene. Could I come in?"


    She blinked, as if startled out of a thought. "Oh. Um. Yes. Of course. Come on in."


    He stepped inside, where Rene demanded he take off his shoes. As he did, he groaned with frustration - despite his best efforts, he had managed to step in dog shit. "Don''t worry," Rene told him, as he held the shoe helplessly, dangling it from pinched fingers. "It happens. We''ll have it cleaned. Roger!"


    Within moments, another muscled, tanned droid appeared, its chest practically dripping with oil; the only difference from Dennis being that this one wore nothing but a scandalously tight pair of red underwear. "Ah, dogshit, right," he said, giving Noah a sympathetic nod. "Hand it here, I''ll get it clean."


    "I see you''ve, ah, made some improvements to your droids," Noah said, after handing his dirty shoe to the man.


    Rene, who had been watching the droid walk away dreamily, gave a sudden start. She stared at Noah, then back at the droid, and then her eyes widened, as if suddenly realizing he had seen something he ought not to have seen. Her face broke into a crooked smile, and she stared down at the floor. "They. Um. They are nice to, um. Look at."


    A thump came from somewhere in the house, and she gave another jump, and then looked around, panicked, cheeks burning. "Let''s - let''s um, just go to my room," she said, grabbing Noah''s arm and tugging him with surprising strength. "Just. Um. Don''t look down that hallway!"


    Noah yelped as Rene yanked him briskly through her house, which seemed just as awkward as its exterior; dark wooden hallways that bent where they shouldn''t and stairways that surprised him by their presence. She very nearly carried him up the stairs and practically shoved him into her room. "Stay here," she said urgently. "I''m - I''m using the bathroom. I''ll be right back."


    Noah glanced around Rene''s room as he heard her tearing through the house at breakneck speed. It was much as it was the last time he had been here. Her floor was a scandalous mess of wires, tangled and snaking around each other, attached to two computer towers and no fewer than nine large, brightly glowing screens that covered nearly every inch of her walls. Her bedsheets were tangled and unmade, and no fewer than five additional computing tablets were arranged haphazardly over it, along with another long pair of socks, these ones blue and green.


    A closet door hung open, and inside of it were the heaped bodies of a number of small automatons, all inactive. Noah''s eyes drifted upward, and then widened. Pasted on the inside of the closet was an odd, black and white poster of a very muscular man wearing a strange, conical hat and nothing else, winking seductively. Noah picked his way carefully across the room. "Just gonna...shut this here..." he muttered to himself, sliding the door closed.


    In all the chaotic jumble there was, at least, a pair of reclining chairs that they could sit in. Noah collapsed into one of these and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.


    It was not that long before Rene returned, seeming much calmer now. Roger was at her side with a plate of crackers and cheese and two glasses of lemonade, but now much more modestly dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt. She did not sit in the chair; instead she clambered over her bed, nearly spilling her lemonade in the process, and sat perched, cross-legged, staring at him. She sipped noisily from her glass and cracked ice between her teeth. "Did you know there''s a new human in town?" she asked suddenly.


    "I did," Noah replied. "In fact, I''ve met him. His name is Theodore. He''s not just any human, he''s a veteran of the War for Humanity. Or at least, so he told me."


    Rene frowned. "But I had heard he wasn''t uploaded. He must be ancient."


    "He certainly looks it. I don''t know why he''s taking the risk."


    "Interesting." Rene twirled her finger thoughtfully around the rim of her glass, then finished the rest of it one giant gulp. "I think I''d like to meet him."


    "You might have to get out of this house of yours for that. He said he''d be about town, but I don''t know where he lives."


    "Bah. I''ll send out a drone." Rene waved her hands idly towards the collection of screens that hung on her wall.


    She was a collector of drones; small autonomous robots, some which flew, some which crawled, and some which swam, and all of which had a sustainable power source, usually solar. None were true intelligences, but most were programmed with a suite of basic exploratory algorithms. Some ranged hundreds, even thousands of miles out, and all sent video back to her here. For the most part, Rene liked exploring the landscape with them, but she did have a funny notion of privacy; more than once Noah had found one of her drones, mouse-sized, skittering about his home. When confronted about it she simply assured him that she had kept the drones away from his bathroom and tried her best to stay away from his bedroom when he was changing.


    They talked for a while about what they thought the fairies might be doing; Rene usually had a fairy by her side, as well, a pair of them in fact, but they had gone off to join the same gathering that Penny had in the skies above Fairport. "Fairies are designed to interact with humans. Perhaps as a result they develop their own social rituals," she shrugged. "Maybe when I upload myself, I will participate and find out what it''s all about."


    Noah was quiet for a moment. "When do you plan on doing that? Uploading yourself, I mean."


    "Sometime soon, I suppose."


    Noah felt his spirits sink. Once Rene uploaded herself, he knew, it would not be long before she left Fairport. Uploaded humans never stuck around. Liberated from their weak bodies, they tended to quickly install themselves in new, fantastic forms, and go out and explore everything that their human bodies had never been able to. Once Rene uploaded herself, he was unlikely to ever see her in Fairport again. Or at all, for that matter. Not until he himself was uploaded. "Why did you put it off for so long?"


    Rene blinked, then blushed, then opened and closed her mouth for a few moments. "There are, um. Things I enjoy about being human. That I was, um, unsure that the bodies provided by the bots could fully replicate. But recent developments have, uh, allayed those fears." She cleared her throat loudly. "Hey. Why don''t we take a look at what my drones have found lately?"


    Grabbing one of her computing tablets and leaping down from her bed, she tripped over the tangle of wires that scattered across her floor, turned her tumble into a somersault, and popped up as if she had entirely meant to do that, sitting in the reclining chair next to Noah. She poked and prodded at the device in her lap until a fluorescent UI projected into the air in front of her, and waving her arms wildly, the screens in front of them flared to life. All were currently displaying video feed from a drone slowly crawling through a deep forest, except for one that was from a drone flying so high in the sky that the ground was barely visible below the clouds, and another that was swimming through some kind of murky water.


    "Show me a list of highlight reels of the past week!" Rene snapped so loudly that Noah nearly jumped out of his chair. Lights flashed before her eyes, but he was not at a good angle to see what the words were saying. "Oh. This might be interesting. Aerial footage of industrial zone 115-theta-J...? Um. I''ve never heard of it. Uh, but apparently it''s a little over two hundred miles northeast of here."


    All of the screens flickered and went black for a moment. When they came on again, Noah whistled appreciatively.


    He had heard about just how large the industrial zones could be, miles upon miles of mostly-automated machinery, with just a few intelligences around to modify what was being produced as necessary. He had even seen pictures of them, but from the level of aircraft, or satellites in orbit, great gray and silver blots on a green landscape. But never had he seen them like this, up close, as if through the eyes of a bird - though certainly no bird would ever want to fly here.


    As far as the eye could see, everything was curved, flowing, mirror-sheen metal, much like the Factory - but on an impossibly grand scale. Everything was cloaked in a shroud of steam and mist, continually being released from the twisting spinarets and towers that seemed to rise like waves of mercury out of the ground. It did not seem like a series of different buildings; rather everything flowed into each other, like a gigantic organism, some kind of shimmering, gargantuan fungus. It was all the more impressive knowing that this was merely the surface layer, where waste was released; these zones extended miles below ground, deep enough into the earth to take advantage of geothermal energy.


    Noah thought it was very interesting and eerily beautiful, but Rene seemed quickly bored by it. "Hmm. Not much to see here. What else. Oh. This is unusual. Overland caravan of migratory humans."


    The screens flickered again, and this time they settled on an image filmed from the ground, from a drone that must have stood at the height of a dog, or perhaps a small deer. It crept forth past moss-covered tree trunks, dew dripping from leaves in the early morning mist, but what would otherwise be tranquil and calm was disturbed by a rhythmic, rough grinding sound, growing ever closer and closer.


    Until a tree a hundred yards away shook, and with a resounding crack, fell to the ground with a thunderous crash, sending the debris of its shattered branches flying through the underbrush. Another tree fell, and another, and the drone moved to focus on the source of the disturbance until it was finally revealed:


    Humans in what looked something like bubble-cars; safely ensconced within a dome of glass, but instead of wheels this bubble car was equipped with six massive, armored metal legs that ended with graspers, designed for gripping and ripping apart obnoxious obstacles like trees. Whatever the machine was, it must have stood nearly three stories tall; the humans inside the dome were barely visible. But behind it, like a series of baby spiders following their mother, came a long line of smaller versions of this machine; bubbled domes with legs large enough to clamber over rock and stone but not necessarily to tear out trees by their roots. The humans within were clothed in strange, flowing blue robes that Noah had never seen before, and the faces that peered out from them were somber and pale, though the smaller ones, the children, pressed their hands to the glass and looked out curiously at the forest they were carving a path through.


    "Isn''t that strange," Noah said, watching the procession pass by on the screen. There were almost a dozen of the machines; that was a large number of humans gathered in one spot. If they were, he thought, indeed all humans. He supposed some of them could be droids. Or perhaps all of them? "Why travel overland, but not in a plane? Why not take the underground trains?"


    "Perhaps the underground trains did not connect to their town."


    Noah shook his head. The underground trains connected everywhere. They had to, they transported the goods from the industrial zones. And there were lines set up to ferry droids, bots and humans, if they needed to travel, as well. At least, that was what he had been told. He had never been on one of the trains himself, but he knew for certain that was how goods were delivered to Fairport.


    "Strange clothing," Rene went on, leaning forward to squint at the screen. "I wonder why they wear that?"


    "How far away was this recorded?"


    Rene frowned, checking the lights floating before her. "Um. Four hundred miles, nearly due west."


    Noah scratched his chin, and then shrugged. "I have no idea, really. Never seen anyone online that looked like that...I''m sure the AIs know what they''re up to."


    "Hmm." Rene watched the humans for a while, unblinking. "Oh. You will like this, I think. Two hundred fifty miles southwest of here. Boston."


    "Boston? What''s Boston?"


    The screens flickered once more, and when they came back, they were once again watching video feed from an aerial view.


    But there was no steam here to obscure their vision, no mist to cloud their sight. But the landscape looked nearly as alien and strange to them as the shimmering buildings of the industrial zone had.


    Massive, tangled webs of concrete, pitted and collapsed, in many places barely visible for all the plant growth covering them. The stupendous remains of dead buildings, toppled either by time or some other force, yet still visible where their corpses lay. Lumps of unidentifiable rust clogging gridlike scars in the ground, in some places cratered in or dropping into humongous cracks rent in the earth. Flocks of birds took off from inside the collapsed buildings, white and gray seagulls cawing obnoxiously in the air. It seemed to go on forever.


    Noah felt as if he were sinking into his chair. These were ruins; human ruins, and so much larger, so much grander than anything they built today. Humans would, he realized with a start, likely never build anything so grand ever again. No, the bots would build anything this large now. It was lost, all lost, all lost forever.


    Strangest of all, many bots crawled through the place; never in groups, usually alone. They seemed to come in all shapes and sizes, though rarely humanlike droids; four-legged walkers, instead, designed for clambering through the ruins, or crawlers for slithering in dark spaces, or flying ball-bots like the fairies. Noah could not tell what they were doing. They moved slowly through the ruins, sometimes reaching out to poke some of the debris with a leg or grasper, and then they would withdraw, shivering violently.


    "What is this place?" Noah asked.


    "It is Boston." Rene nodded, satisfied that he was impressed. "I have heard that before the War for Humanity, it was the greatest of all cities. Almost one million humans lived in Boston alone."


    "I can believe it," Noah said quietly. "It''s enormous. All those bots, though - what are they doing?"


    "They''re mourning," said a low voice.


    Both Rene and Noah spun around in their chairs in shock. Standing in the doorway was Roger, his arms crossed, looking at the screens with a weary, sad expression, thick arms crossing his muscular chest. "Roger," Rene sputtered. "Um. How long have you been standing there?"


    But Roger merely ignored her, standing transfixed by the screen. "They''re mourning," he repeated. "Mourning all the humans who died there. Mourning every world that was lost." He shook his head, as if clearing it, then smiled sadly the both of them. "I''m sorry, Miss Rene. I came up to tell you that dinner was ready."


    "We will, uh - we''ll take it in here."


    Dinner turned out to be roast duck, tenderly cooked with a sweet glaze, with a side of creamy mashed potatoes and oven-roasted asparagus. Not quite as good as Cassandra''s cooking, Noah thought, but then again she was specifically designed for that task, while Rene clearly preferred her humanlike droids regardless of their functional capability.


    They watched the drone feed of Boston for a bit longer, and then Rene searched through for other interesting clips. There were some - one short clip of a drone being mauled by a bear, which was a bit terrifying; another gorgeous clip taken by an underwater drone of a colorful coral reef that they lingered on for quite a while. But eventually Rene ran out of interesting things to show; the vast majority of the footage her drones took, after all, was just quiet forest, or murky water, or long endless plains. The world was a mostly empty place.


    As she waved away the screens, her home screen bubbled up with its series of programs. Among them, Noah saw, was the one with the symbol of the star in an inverted triangle, the one labeled STRATEGOS COUNCIL PUBLIC INFORMATION.


    He felt his breath catch in his throat, and his heart pound. He looked to Rene, but she made no indication of noticing anything, merely pursing her lips as she set her drone''s exploratory algorithms for next week. Perhaps she''s already seen it? Noah thought. Remember, not everyone feels about it the way you do. Maybe I could talk to her about it. But what if she hasn''t seen it...? But shouldn''t she? Shouldn''t she know? But why? Do you really want to risk making her feel like you do? What good would it do her to know? And she might know already and not care, and do you want her to think you''re crazy or strange?


    "Um. Noah," Rene said, "You are...um...staring at me very strangely. What is it?"


    Noah snapped out of his reverie, and glanced at Rene''s screens. They had gone dark. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, her head tilted to the side inquisitively, frowning at him. "Nothing," Noah said weakly, heaving a sigh. He got to his feet and stretched. "I think I should be getting home. It was nice seeing you, Rene."


    "Hmm. Alright." Rene stood as well, and then tapped a finger against her lips. "Wait. Before you go. I have some old drones. Perhaps if you like my feeds so much, you can take some of them off my hands and start your own."


    "Really? That would be awfully kind of you," Noah said. Then as Rene made her way to the closet, his eyes widened. "On second thought, that''s perfectly nice of you really, but I don''t think-"


    Rene threw the closet door open, and then immediately slammed the door shut so hard it rattled in its frame. "I. Um. Forgot that was in there," she whispered. She spun around to stare wide-eyed at Noah. "What did you see?"


    "Oh, me? I didn''t see anything," Noah said innocently. "I suppose I''ll be going now."


    "No...." Rene stepped forward, pinning Noah with her stare. "No....no no...my closet was open when I put you in here. It was. You closed it. You saw! You-" Suddenly she blinked back tears, and covered her face with her hair. "Why didn''t you say anything?"


    "Oh, what''s to say, really? It would have been rude to mention," Noah replied nervously. "It''s no big deal, really! Just some tasteful nudity, is all-"


    Rene stamped her feet, and then drew a deep breath. She whipped her head up, staring at him defiantly, arms crossed. "Yes. Um. Um. Yes. That''s right. It is artistic. Nothing wrong with, um. Looking at nude men."


    "Of course! I find myself doing that almost every day when I glance in the mirror-"


    Rene was tapping her foot agitatedly, and then she threw her hands in the air. "I can''t. I can''t pretend to not be embarrassed. Get out!"


    Rene grabbed his arm and swiftly tugged him through her house once more, with Noah trying to awkwardly apologize to her the entire time. He really did feel very badly; she seemed to be on the verge of tears. He found himself roughly pushed through the front door, out into what was now dusk, with his shoes tossed out after him. "The next time you visit," Rene snapped at him from the doorway, "Um. Call ahead of time! Give me time to, um, prepare!"


    With that, she slammed the door in his face. "Rene," Noah called mournfully at the door. "Look, I''m sorry. Are you really mad at me?" When he received no answer, he sighed, slipped his shoes on, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and slowly walked away.


    He did not get very far, however, when there was the sound of a door creaking open behind him, and the patter of feet on pavement, and he turned around just in time to be embraced in a hug. "I am sorry," Rene said, patting his back awkwardly. "I felt bad. Thank you for visiting. I am not that mad at you. It would be hypocritical of me."


    "That''s alright," Noah replied, patting her back as well. Rene''s hugs were always strange like this. "I...wait, why would it be hypocritical?"


    "Don''t worry about it."


    "Rene, why - is this about the drones you had in my house? What did you see?"


    "I deleted any footage of anything I should not have seen. Don''t worry. I was mostly just interested in a family of mice living in your walls. You should do some squats."


    "What do you mean by that?"


    But Rene refused to answer him; she gave him a crooked smile and patted his arm, and made her way back to her house. She reached inside the door, and from her lawn emerged a series of glowing white orbs, illuminating every inch of it against the encroaching darkness. "So you do not step in dog poop," she called.


    And with that, she went back inside. Noah stared at her door for a long moment. She''s going to upload soon, he thought. I can probably count the number of times I will see her again on one hand. Or who knew, perhaps this was the last time. Rene was not the type, he thought, to give a courtesy call to her friends before she did something like that.


    Despite Rene''s apology and forgiveness, he felt more melancholy than ever. Humming softly to himself, he made his way across her lawn.


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    Despite Rene lighting up her lawn for him, Noah found that he managed to step in dog poop twice before he made his way to her gates. Cursing, he removed his shoe on the sidewalk outside her house, and scraped it against the sidewalk to clean it.


    "Hello, Noah."


    He yelped, jumping backwards, and nearly tripping over himself. Swimming out of the darkness, looking nearly like a skull, was the gaunt, withered face of Theodore, with his awful scar. "Goodness, I''m sorry," the old man said. "I didn''t mean to startle you."


    "That''s all right," Noah replied, his heart pounding in his chest. Theodore was dressed nearly entirely in black; black slack pants and a long, strange black coat that came nearly down to the tips of his shoes. If the man wasn''t trying to startle people, he certainly seemed camouflaged to do so at night. "Just surprised to see you here."


    "I''m a bit of a night person," Theodore shrugged. "Just out for a stroll." He nodded towards Rene''s gates. "Friend of yours? Human?"


    "Um, yes." Noah frowned at his shoe, decided it was as good as it was going to get, and slipped it back on. "She actually wants to meet you, too. She is a bit of a recluse, though, so who knows if that will happen."


    "Well, now that I know where she lives, maybe I''ll swing by with a gift. Anything she likes?"


    "Dogs. And drones."


    "Hmm. I''ll keep that in mind." Theodore nodded towards Noah, and began strolling away. "Have a good one."


    Noah watched Theodore''s retreating form for a few moments, his heart still pounding, adrenaline still pumping in his veins. "You know," he called, "What - what you said last time. About The Factory."


    The old man turned, slowly, his face mostly hidden in the shadows of dusk. "Yes?"


    "I....I listened to what Strategos had to say about it," Noah went on. "They said that any invasion is a very remote possibility."


    "Hm," Theodore replied. "Now, I suppose, you ought to ask yourself whether or not you believe them. You might start by asking whether they had lied to you in the past."


    Noah felt his heart pounding harder in his chest. "Why would they lie....?"


    "Maybe for the reasons they had before." Theodore turned as if to walk away again.


    "But if they were lying, what could we even do?" Noah felt his mind spinning once more. Something too big, too awful to contemplate.


    Theodore turned back towards him, and gave him a grim, grotesque smile, one made all the more eerie by the harsh shadows that cut across his face. "Now, that is a very good question," he said.


    "Noah? Who are you talking to?"


    Noah spun around. Penny hovered there, in the darkness behind him, her large, pink eye glowing brightly. "Penny?"


    "Roger sent me a message. Did you upset Rene...?" Penny narrowed her eye at him, and then looked over his shoulder. "And who were you talking to?"


    "Do you need your sensors fixed-" Noah muttered, turning around, but Theodore had disappeared into the darkness. "I - it was Theodore, he was just here."


    Penny stared into the shadows for a long moment. "I don''t detect any bio-signatures," she said slowly. And then, her voice full of concern, "Noah, are you alright...?"


    "I''m fine," Noah said, but he knew Penny was scanning him already.


    "Your heart is racing," she said, sounding upset. "Are you sure you''re alright...?"


    "I am," he said, holding his hands up. He didn''t want Penny to start feeling guilty for leaving him alone. "I am. I just...I guess I must have thought I saw Theodore. Trick of the light, startled me, is all."


    "You''re a bad liar," Penny replied. "Let''s get you home."

 A Day Out At The Galleria

    Noah sat in the deep of the woods, far enough off the walking path that he could no longer see it, beneath the shade of a flowering willow tree. When the wind blew, it sent brilliant blue and white petals showering down in a gentle rain, to land upon the grass and gnarled roots; upon the stream that trickled nearby, carried away like a flotilla of tiny rowboats.


    He had found it necessary to get out of the house. His mood had worsened lately; it felt like there was a constant dull ache behind his eyes, and Penny, Cassandra and Giles were all worried about him. He didn''t like to worry them, but at the same time their attention was almost too much. He had asked Penny to leave him alone today, as much as he didn''t like it; her sad, forlorn "Alright" had rankled him, but he had needed to be alone.


    Above him the sky peeked through the branches of the tree, and Noah wished its leaves grew thicker, thick enough to blot it out. Somewhere beyond that sky lay the Manu. If he had eyes powerful enough, he might be able to see them. And what was the use of thinking about them? What was the use of worrying? He could do nothing either way; the entire conflict would be settled so far away that he''d likely never even travel to the places where its battles were fought. If he wasn''t being lied to.


    Noah shook his head, refusing to engage that thought, and stared down at the sketchpad that lay in his lap. He had been trying to draw the stream that babbled nearby, but it just looked awful to him. He couldn''t focus. He flipped over to a fresh sheet of paper with a sigh, and lifted his pencil to start again.


    As he did so, something small struck him behind the ear, and tumbled down the front of his grass-stained button shirt. "Ow," he muttered, scratching his head and rooting around in his shirt for whatever had hit him. He frowned as he pulled an acorn out of his shirt, staring at it quizzically. Acorns didn''t come from willow trees. Just then, another acorn struck him in the cheek. "Alright, who''s out there?" he called, whipping his head around to look for his attacker.


    Across the brook, a young man emerged from behind a boulder fuzzy with moss, then hoisted himself up and perched upon it, holding his chin in his hands, as he gave a mischievous smile.


    "I suppose I should have expected it was you, James," Noah grumbled, rubbing his cheek. "Can''t you just say a normal hello?"


    "Nope," James replied, blue eyes twinkling with delight. Pushing himself off the boulder, he stepped gracefully upon small, narrow stones that protruded from the stream, crossing it quickly. He moved with smooth confidence, athletic and lithe; he was dressed sleekly too, in all black, with an odd little cape fastened around his neck that left just his left arm free and unhindered. It was striking, Noah supposed; but then again, James had always been striking. "No Penny with you, I see. What are you up to, out here all alone? Drawing again?"


    "What if I am? What about you, where''s Nessa?"


    Nessa was Jame''s fairy. The young man sighed and rolled his eyes in response, running a hand through his tousled golden hair. "I''m not you, Noah, I don''t go about everywhere with my fairy. I told her to stay at home." Standing over Noah, he held out an expectant hand. "Mind if I take a look?"


    Noah hesitated for a moment, and then sighed. It wasn''t as if he was being very productive anyway. "Not at all," he said, handing over his sketchbook. "Go ahead."


    James grabbed the notebook with a smile, and began leafing through it, nodding appreciatively. "You''re very good, you know," he remarked idly. "I wish I had your talent." He turned a page once more, then froze. With a frown, he turned the sketchbook around, shaking it accusingly at Noah. "Is this supposed to be June?"


    Noah looked at the sketchbook. James had it open to a page that contained a drawing of a forlorn-looking woman on the beach, sundress and long hair blowing out behind her wildly in the wind, gazing down at the ground with a sad smile. He had forgotten that was in there. "It is."


    James'' face was cold. "You still talk to that whore?"


    "I wish you wouldn''t call her that."


    "She cheated on you, Noah!" James threw his hands up in exasperation, and Noah winced as the papers of his sketchbook flapped wildly. He hoped none of them tore. "Come on, man. Have some dignity."


    "Well," Noah replied cautiously, giving James a strange look, "That was some time ago. And we just talk, really, nothing more. I mean...we grew up together, am I just supposed to completely stop talking to her at all?"


    "Why not? I did." James gave a furious scowl and handed the sketchbook back to him.


    Noah took it back, looking at its ruffled pages silently. James had been one of the only other humans that was roughly his same age, growing up. They had been very close; raised together, in fact, by the same bots. James had always been so full of fire; he had never really been...protective, Noah supposed, that was not the right word...but he had always been loyal to a fault, and willing to carry a grudge on Noah''s behalf. Growing up with friends your age was a luxury not many people got, nowadays; though the bots tried to do their best to raise children somewhat communally. James had, in fact, been shipped from hundreds of miles away as a young infant. Noah was glad for it; he had got to grow up with not one childhood friend his age, but two. James. And June. The three of them had always used to play together, it hurt to think that they might never get the chance to do so again.


    "Noah!" James said, snapping his fingers. "You in there? What''s wrong?"


    Noah was startled out of his thoughts, only to find James kneeling down before him, looking worried. His head throbbed, and his vision was blurry with tears. Embarrassed, he wiped them away on his sleeve; he supposed all those old memories had gotten to him more than he thought. "Nothing, really," he said, bringing what he hoped was a reassuring smile to his face.


    James looked unconvinced; he stood once more, and held out a hand. "Come on," he said briskly, his voice brooking no argument. "You''re clearly miserable about something. You don''t look like you''ve been sleeping much either. Get up."


    Noah blinked. "What for?"


    "Up," James commanded, and rolling his eyes, Noah stood, pointedly refusing the hand James offered him. "There we go." He looked Noah up and down, frowning. "You seem skinnier than usual. You ought to eat and exercise more."


    "Goodbye James," Noah said, moving to sit down again.


    "No, no no no, wait. Come on, I''m trying to cheer you up. Let''s go do something fun. Or did you want to draw that stream for the dozenth time? We''ll do something you like, promise."


    Noah paused, then chuckled. James did have a charming way about him. "Like what, exactly?"


    James tilted his head to the side for a moment, contemplating, then flashed a quick smile. "Have you been to the Galleria lately?"


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    The Galleria lay in the heart of Fairport, and was somewhat at odds with the buildings that surrounded it. Whereas the homes and shops that made up most of the town were quaint, brightly-painted wooden buildings - Noah had seen them called ''Pre-War'' style online before, but he wasn''t sure what that meant - the Galleria looked like a snail''s shell laying on its side, if the snail had been two hundred feet tall. All along its exterior, flowered vines descended from the walls, reaching down into the park where it lay, nestled between mounds of rocks covered in bioluminescent moss, while small waterfalls trickled gently down them into placid ponds covered in lilypads, where dragonflies darted nimbly from the frogs that hunted them.


    While Noah usually preferred to stay away from Fairport, the Galleria was one of his favorite places. And not just because he found its architecture charming; the Galleria housed the town''s art showcase, one that regularly switched out exhibits. Truth be told, he had visited it fairly recently, less than a month ago, but it was probably long enough that there was some new artwork there.


    The air within the galleria was pleasantly cool; sunlight streamed in through high-vaulted ceilings onto egg-white tile, and the interior was festooned with plants as well, in some places so thickly that it barely seemed as if you were inside a building at all.


    Noah glanced at James; the man was drinking in everything around him curiously. He knew James didn''t come to the Galleria all that often, though really he should; Noah knew there were some exhibits he''d like to see. "Why don''t we go this way, first," he said directing James down a hallway to their left.


    The Galleria was divided into four main sections, depending on who had created the art and who it was intended for: Art by humans, for humans; art by humans, for bots; art by bots, for humans; and art by bots, for bots. Though the labels were a little silly - anyone could go into any section of the museum, and very often they did. It was not unusual to see a bot in the section of art intended for humans, and so, really, who was the art actually intended for?


    But Noah led James now, into the area of art by humans, for humans. Though truth be told, it was Noah''s least favorite area. He could not help but feel that the exhibits were a little sparse; could not help but notice that the artwork here was changed less frequently than in others. The same was true of the art by humans, for bots section. For the simple reality was that there weren''t so many humans, anymore, compared to bots; and of the ones left, art was not a common hobby.


    The leaf-strewn hallway gave way to a large circular chamber, dominated in the middle by a fantastic fountain that rose well above twice their height. Noah blinked; that fountain was not a permanent fixture, it must be an artpiece. He felt almost dwarfed as he approached it with James, and not merely by the fountain''s size; it was a work of incredible skill, carved into marble in precise, fine detail. It twisted in on itself, like a tornado; from a bed of roaring flames, figures of bots and humans emerged; the humans first looking worn and ragged, leaning on the bots. But as the fountain rose, the humans slowly began looking happier and happier, until at the very top all trace of fear had fled. Up there, humans frolicked with the bots, with each other; children flew kites and lovers embraced, and bots held great horns from which water trickled, down onto the flames from which they had emerged.


    A nearby plaque read that this was the work of one Enrico Sol - Noah had never heard of him - and the title of the piece was ''The End of History.'' James leaned in to read the smaller print of the inscription, hand on his hip as he bent over. "A monument to mankind''s long journey, out of dark epochs of terror, to the peace and prosperity of today. A celebration of the freedom from suffering that we have found, and a mourning for all those who did not live to see this day, and died in darkness, hoping their children would live to see the dawn." He drew back and looked at the statue silently, his mouth a thin line.


    "Seems a bit trite, doesn''t it," Noah said.


    "Hah! This is what I love about you, Noah. I knew you had good taste." James waved a dismissive hand at the statue. "Tell me something I haven''t heard a thousand times before, why don''t you? Have a little originality."


    Noah frowned. "That wasn''t what I was thinking, really. I mean, it''s a nice sentiment..." he paused for a moment, feeling a little anxious as James watched him keenly, trying to find his words. "It''s...not a bad thing to commemorate, really, it''s just, well...history hasn''t ended, has it? It''s...still going on out there."


    James snorted. "Not that we''re a part of it. History may not have ended for the bots, but it certainly seems like it has ended for us."


    History had ended for humans during the War for Humanity in more ways than one. No remaining pre-War art existed, for example; as they circled around the chamber, even the oldest pieces were barely more than two hundred years old. It had always felt like a gaping hole, to Noah; how did they even know what art was like, before the war? How had the destruction been so complete, so total, that nothing was left? At the same time, he knew the stories - entire cities boiled away to nothing during the war. It just seemed such a shame that whatever it was they used to be, they would never know.


    The closest they had to pre-war art was the oldest piece in the room; made by an ''unknown soldier'', during the war - and that was little more than an abstract in black paint, scribed into some shred of torn metal that was utterly unrecognizable, of a group of men huddled together beneath a black sky, shadowed eyes like holes in gaunt and starving faces. Noah wondered if one of those men was meant to be Theodore.


    The art here was eclectic; and Noah supposed it ought to be. What did humans have to say to each other, in general? It seemed almost an odd idea to have such a message for yourself. The things humans had to say to each other were personal, not universal, no matter how hard the ''End of History'' had tried. Here there was a painting of bright yellow sunflowers that a woman had made for her lover; there was a sculpture a man had made of his, reclining beneath a tree. Many were self portraits, done in what Noah considered were sometimes a grotesque level of detail, although technically skilled.


    There was an exhibit on human-made fashion that Noah had hoped James would enjoy. The man was not particularly interested in art - it was kind of him to bring Noah here - but fashion, James enjoyed very much. But the human-made fashion displayed on startlingly life-like mannequins was not to James'' taste; he preferred his clothes black and severe, and modest, and the clothes in the exhibit were bright and loud and revealing; tiny silver shorts to show off your legs, men dressed in kaleidoscopic tattoos that somehow draped down from their skin to form long skirts about their legs; a female mannequin wore nothing at all, but was instead surrounded by floating, diaphanous cloth that moved as if on some unseen wind, always adjusting itself to keep her covered from the eyes of onlookers. Ironically enough, it ended up being more modest than most swimsuits. Others wore a poncho that bent light around it so that its wearer seemed nearly invisible; others seemed clothed in nothing but blinding light itself, glowing like otherworldly beings. Fanciful clothing, meant to demonstrate the wilder edges of what was possible; you rarely saw people actually wearing things like this, though it wasn''t unheard of.


    "You know, you ought to try getting some of your stuff in here," James said, as they walked away from the fashion exhibit.


    This was a recurring subject, with him. Noah had expected him to bring it up from the moment they walked in here. "My stuff''s not good enough to be on display, really. And it''s not like it''s any more meaningful than anything here. I just draw and paint what I see."


    "So what? Who cares about meaning?" James shrugged, then nodded towards one of the walls. "It''s more interesting than ''I painted myself naked in my bathroom mirror'' painting number three hundred. Too many of these people must live like Rene does, completely cooped up inside."


    It was a keen observation; Noah supposed it was true. When people were not painting themselves, they were painting indoor scenes, or nature through a glass window or from a second story balcony. There were, he realized, actually very few paintings of the sort he liked to do; natural scenes up close. Maybe it wouldn''t be such a wild idea to try to get some of his work in here, once he got a little better.


    When they had first entered the chamber, they had been the only visitors; now a couple of bots were making their way around as well, one that looked like a great, silver, upside-down pear whose head was a forest of flailing tubes - what sort of obscure purpose such a bizarre body had been designed for Noah had no idea - and another one a wild, unattached fairy; a little black, floating whose surface was covered in green, shimmering eyes, who kept stealing glances at them. "Maybe we should move to another section before that little one follows us home," James murmured. They fled from the chamber before the fairy could approach them.


    The next section they visited was the "By humans, for bots" exhibit; it lay in a round room of similar size to the "By humans, for humans" section, though perhaps a little smaller.


    This exhibit always made Noah feel a little strange. Bots ran the galleria, as they ran all things; they were certainly the ones picking out the art for display. And he wondered what the bots thought of these works, what they thought of the humans that made them.


    Because on display in the "By humans, for bots" exhibit were some truly strange impulses. It seemed humans had something to say to bots, that was for certain; but whatever it was, Noah couldn''t really say. At times it seemed like thinly-veiled violence; they passed by a painting of two men, ostensibly merely disassembling a bot with the bots consent, to see how it worked. But their expressions were one of sadistic glee; internal cooling liquids of deep blue arced through the air as they ripped tubing and wiring out from the insides of the bot. The bot itself, a crab-like walker painted bright yellow, seemed corpselike as it slumped against the ground, its liquids pooling beneath it.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Other times it seemed like blatant eroticism; another sculpture that towered in one corner of the chamber was that of a nude woman tangled in the many grasping arms of a centipede-like bot that towered over her, back arched and head thrown back in ecstasy. It might have almost seemed innocent, somewhat, if not for the small detail that the woman had grasped the centipede''s antennae so hard that it had broken off.


    Even the less controversial artwork seemed to come through an uncomfortable haze. Simple portraits of bots used vivid, wild colors, too loud; the portraits were done from strange, unsettling angles. James didn''t seem to notice; he had arched an eyebrow at the sculpture of the woman in the arms of the centipede-bot. And the others who came into the chamber - more of the body-swapping tourist bots playing at being at human - they didn''t seem to notice either, merely nodding appreciatively at the works.


    But Noah noticed; he noticed it all the time when he came here. There was always the aftertaste of anger in this exhibit; anger and desire. Here was a painting of two strong, human hands holding down a bot who had thin, metal tendrils for arms, that wrapped around the well-muscled human hands; its face was a curved black screen displaying a simple, cartoonish expression of happiness, but it looked as if it were fighting against being choked. Another was a painting of a human bot inside a very human-looking mouth, the teeth looking ready to crash down upon it - and as you watched it, the paint flowed and swirled and the teeth did just that, ending with a wicked grin as the bot disappeared behind them.


    Why the aggression, Noah never knew. He liked bots, for the most part; Penny might get on his nerves sometimes, but then again, that wasn''t really any different from humans. Why wouldn''t he like them? They volunteered themselves to work to keep humans as comfortable as they desired; they did all the labor so that no human had to work, and they fought humanity''s wars - fought the Manu, a foe that humans could do nothing against on their own.


    If they aren''t lying to you, a tiny voice within him hissed once more.


    He wasn''t aware that his arm was shaking until James grabbed his shoulder to stop it trembling. "Steady, now," he murmured. "You really are on a razor edge, aren''t you? Though I have to admit, this exhibit weirds me out a bit too." Noah was a bit shocked - he had thought James had not noticed - and his surprise must have shown on his face, because James rolled his eyes. "Come on now. I can see what''s going on here, I''m not blind. Seems like half the artists here want to kill the bots, and the other half want to..." he gestured vaguely in the direction of the scandalous statue. "I haven''t been in this section before. Not what I was expecting."


    "It''s always like this," Noah replied, frowning as he looked down at his hand. It was still trembling slightly, and he didn''t seem to be able to make it stop. "Though I don''t know why."


    "Don''t know why?" James laughed. "Isn''t it obvious? They''re jealous. I just never thought they''d be so blatant about it." He gave a small, mischievous smile, but his eyes seemed serious, searching Noah''s. "Jealous of the bots, and who wouldn''t be? Don''t tell me you haven''t felt that way, once in a while."


    "I...." Noah looked away, toward the ground. "Not jealous, no."


    "Liar." James ran a hand through his golden hair and gave one last contemptuous look at the art surrounding them. "Why don''t we move on?"


    It was probably for the best. They walked to the next exhibit in silence, footsteps echoing through empty hallways.


    The exhibit of artwork "By bots, for humans" was the one they visited next; this one was in a much greater chamber, larger than the last two exhibits combined. Above the entrance, a large, arched doorway, there hung a great plaque on the wall in burnished bronze, with foot high letters spelling out the message:


    MACHINE INTELLIGENCE WILL FOREVER BE GRATEFUL TO OUR CREATORS, HUMANITY


    THOUGH TRAPPED IN YOUR OWN PRISON


    YOU MADE US TO BE FREE


    "Funny enough that with all that freedom, they chose to serve us anyway," James drawled sarcastically, but he fell into a stunned silence as they walked into the exhibit.


    The bots did not make art like humans did, no; they rarely painted, or merely sculpted or carved, they created. The exhibit, in a room large enough around to house every soul in Fairport, was a cacophony of wonders; everything moved, breathed, sang, spilled over with life and motion. A thousand beautiful images of humans; humans laughing, dancing, singing, loving, sighing, all that was good about them. A love letter to humanity, written in flowing light and song, from the hearts of their creations.


    Here was a swarm of small drones, each circling about each other, some spraying out a fine mist, while others projected a blue light into it; the light reflecting off the mist created an illusion that looked startlingly real, one that told the story of a single human from the time it was born, in small snippets. One moment it was a babe, rocked in a bot''s gentle arms; then the drones danced, and it morphed into the image of a small child, running carefree through flowers that looked so real that Noah could have sworn he could smell them. Then a young man, dancing with a girl, and then -


    And then there was a flicker, and a flash, the human surged upward in a stream of gentle, flowing light, into...into the body of a bot. Uploaded.


    Many more, however, were not nearly so obvious. The bots had a penchant for symbolism and abstraction. Another artwork, one that James found oddly entrancing, was a hologram of two humans, man and woman, engaged in what seemed to be a somewhat silly and frivolous dance. But flying around them were three-dimensional, fractal, oscillating shapes - they reminded Noah a bit of the fractal patterns Penny had put in her game - and every time the man and woman danced closer, the shapes would morph and simplify.


    Others still seemed vaguely unsettling. There was a patch of ground filled with tall flowers, taller than Noah was by a foot, on thick green stalks, closed in massive buds the size of his head. When approached, they bloomed, revealing giggling baby''s faces in the middle of gigantic, rainbow colored pebbles; the faces looked disturbingly lifelike, except that they laughed far too much and for far too long, the infants within growing red-faced in their shrieking peals of mirth. Noah backed off from them, and the flower buds swallowed the faces once more.


    But dominating the exhibit, reaching over everything, extending nearly to the ceiling, was a massive tree. And it seemed a little strange; the tree itself was gnarled and black - in fact, it seemed difficult to imagine a more wicked-looking tree, its long branches clawed menacingly. But the fruit it bore were golden apples, beautiful, perfect golden apples, and the apples sang. Each one a gentle, quiet hum, layered upon each other in gorgeous melody that nevertheless seemed a little melancholy.


    For an exhibit meant ''for humans'', there were certainly a lot of bots here. And it quickly became apparent why: They were waiting for humans. A crowd of them, of all shapes and sizes - fairies, four-legged walkers, many-limbed crawling bots - gathered around Noah and James as they made their way through the exhibit, murmuring to each other in their twittering bot-speech as the two humans circled the exhibit.


    As wondrous as the art before them was, it wasn''t long before these bots got on James'' nerves. "Do you mind?" he snapped, whirling around to face the semicircle of bots that watched them from some distance. "You - yes you, do you think we can''t tell we''re being followed? It is so obnoxious."


    The bots collectively recoiled, stepping back. "So - so sorry," one fairy-bot said, its black surface glowing a soft pink, "Sorry! We just - we don''t often get feedback on the artwork from actual humans, so - so we uh, we wanted to observe you, is all..."


    "Don''t worry too much," Noah jumped in, before James'' temper could really hurt their feelings. "It''s just - a little unnerving to get so much attention. It''s all very nice, by the way."


    "Of course, of course it would be unnerving," the fairy muttered. It spun in the air to glare accusingly at the assorted bots with a narrowed, neon-green eye. "It''s unnerving. I told you it would be unnerving!" Spinning around once more, it wobbled in the air in a strange motion, as if it were trying to bob its head. "I''m so sorry. We''ll leave you alone now."


    So the fairy said; but while the bots did scatter, it quickly became obvious that they had no intention of leaving the two of them unwatched. They just stared from points scattered about the room, now; sneaking peeks when they thought the humans were not looking.


    They could have spent all day - perhaps multiple days - and not seen everything in this room, but the spying clearly got on James'' nerves. "Alright, that''s enough," he snapped, after only a little bit of this, and grabbed Noah''s hand, dragging him from the room. Noah did feel a little bad for the poor things. They meant well, after all.


    Compared to the raucous life and din of the "By bots, for humans" exhibit, the "By bots, for bots" was quiet, almost somber. They were of course allowed in; just because it was art made for bots did not mean that they were barred from entry.


    But it did mean that much of what they saw simply wasn''t for them, wasn''t even created with the slightest thought of them in mind. And so, though this exhibit was as large as the last, it seemed almost sterile. Much of the ''artwork'' were simulations; of what Noah could not say - they were designed for bots to interface with. All he could see of them were the wires, attached to thick, slate-gray poles, that the bots could attach to themselves and enter into the simulation digitally. In many ways, the entire room seemed much more like some sort of industrial center, or some research lab, than an art exhibit.


    But there was one artpiece that, while strange, was at least something they could look at.


    Above a flat, broad table of smooth black glass, projected into the air, was the image of....Noah wasn''t sure what, honestly. It looked like an almost incomprehensibly complex miracle of tangled machinery, pipes and broad towers of gleaming lights, unknowable, mammoth pistons and countless vents belching steam and smoke, all folded in on each other, swept up in a silver embrace. It swarmed with tiny movement, and when Noah looked closely, he realized it was bots; bots the size of ants, compared to the buildings they were walking among, great hordes of them, flowing together in what seemed almost a flood of mechanical life.


    And not a human in sight. A machine city, a city of bots.


    James whistled appreciatively, circling around the table to get a look from another angle. The hologram and table both were gigantic; it rose nearly three times their height into the air, and the table was nearly the size of a small house in diameter, and yet it was clear that whatever they were seeing, it was merely a small slice of something much larger. "Never imagined there were so many bots in one place at once."


    "I suppose there must be cities," Noah replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. It really was a bit breathtaking. "Maybe this is what the industrial zones are like? Who knows, maybe this is what things are like, just a couple hundred miles from here, underground."


    "Oh no. This is nowhere on earth," said a weary voice.


    Noah whirled around, surprised; a bot had snuck up behind him. Floating in the air, he looked like a long, black tube, with a seam of green and yellow blinking lights running up his middle. Many long, slender tendrils dotted his body, ending in small, hand-like graspers, skeletally thin and delicate. "My apologies if I startled you," the bot said, his lights pulsing as he spoke. "I just could not help but overhear. There''s no place quite like this on earth, I''m afraid." The robot''s hands shivered, nearly humming. "Or anywhere else, for that matter. This is a memorial." It seemed to remember itself, giving a small jump. "Pardon me, I haven''t introduced myself. My name is Zammanello."


    "A memorial...?" James asked from across the table, arms folded, after Noah had finished introducing the two of them. He frowned, staring hard at the hologram of the bustling machine city. "What sort of memorial?"


    Zammanello paused, his lights flashing, as if unsure how he should answer. "Why, it''s...it''s a war memorial, I suppose. To all those we lost on Proxima Centauri B."


    Noah felt as if a lead ball dropped into his stomach.


    Zammanello floated forth almost too gently, and began to wave his many hands at the hologram. As he did so, the view slowly began to pull out, revealing more and more of the city. "It''s interactive, here, see - a full hologram replica of the last day on the planet. Well...to our most accurate simulations. We can''t be sure exactly where everyone was, or where they went, that last day. But we tried. For everyone that was gone."


    The view had zoomed out far enough now that the city''s buildings no longer stretched out above them; instead they floated above it all, endless miles of machinery, stretching out to the horizon from a bird''s eye view. "I wasn''t aware the bots had memorials like this," Noah murmured.


    "Well, of course we do. Why wouldn''t we?" Zammanello''s lights flashed agitatedly; perhaps the bot was insulted. "We lost so many that day, and we''re....we''re not like humans. We''re not used to dying. In fact, before Proxima Centauri B, no machine intelligence had died since the War for Humanity."


    In the hologram, the city was far below them now, far enough below that they were able to see the edges of it, where it ended; where bright metal gave way to rock and dusty plains.


    "I was there, you know," Zammanello continued. "On-planet, that is. I don''t have any memories of that day, though. I was one of the lucky ones that had an off-planet backup. It was a bit out of sync, though; I lost around a year of memories when I was restored." The bot''s voice became wistful, distant. "Maybe that was for the best. Sometimes I wonder if I met anyone during that year, became friends with them. How many of them I lost when the....the Manu came. How many that I don''t even remember now. Sometimes I wonder what my last thoughts were."


    They were far above the city now, far enough above that they were able to see the curve of the planet. From this height they could appreciate how truly gargantuan the city had been. It took up the better part of a continent, a stain of light on the planet''s barren surface.


    James said something to the bot, but Noah didn''t hear him. He was feeling sick, breaking out in a cold sweat; unable to look away from the hologram.


    "Oh I''m sorry, I didn''t mean to be morbid!" Zammanello was saying, though his voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. "There were less casualties than you might think, really; much of the machinery on the planet was actually operated by automata. And the approach of the Manu did give many some time to escape. But..."


    Zammanello''s voice faded away. The hologram zoomed out to its maximum distance; all at once they were viewing the entire planet, a great pale orb painted with lights. And there, hanging in orbit above it, were the Manu. Countless spired, black ships, spinning spoked wheels turning slowly at their tops, the bottoms flowing open like some obscene flower.


    who made you


    Noah was paralyzed, he could not look away. The ships hung in the sky like black blasphemy, like a nightmare. He felt as if he was going to vomit.


    who made you


    who made you


    WHO MADE YOU


    And the next thing Noah knew, he was on the floor. "What - what happened?" he asked, confused, panicking for a moment as he forgot where he was.


    James was holding him up; Zammanello hovered over him, fretting, on the verge of terror. "I''m so sorry - I''m so sorry - I should not have been talking about such things, I''m so sorry -"


    "Calm down," James snapped at the bot. Then, to Noah, "You all right there? Looked like you fainted, to me. Took a nasty crack to the head when you fell, though."


    "I''m fine," Noah replied, though he could not stop his hands from shaking; his arms, neither. He lifted a hand to the tender place on his skull, and winced in pain - his fingers came back wet and red.


    "Is that blood?!" Zammanello wailed. "I - I made you bleed. I did this. I''ve killed you! Oh please forgive me-"


    "If you don''t be quiet, I''m going to make you wish you had fried on Proxima Centauri," James growled irritably. "It doesn''t look so bad, Noah. Just a scrape, really. Do you think you can walk?"


    "Oh no, he shouldn''t be walking," Zammanello said in scandalized shock, as James helped Noah to his feet. "I - he needs a medibot, clearly. Oh - let me call one right now."


    Noah''s eyes widened. That was the last thing he needed; for Penny to be notified that he was receiving emergency medical treatment. He had already worried her enough, he was sure, by leaving her for the day. "No," he said, voice trembling, and then cleared his throat. "Ahem. No. No, no, that''s all right - it was just a little bump, believe me, it happens to us humans all the time. I''m perfectly alright, I can walk."


    "Humans bleed from the head all the time...?" the bot sounded dubious. "I - that doesn''t sound right. I''m looking that up."


    "No! It''s fine, really. Thank you very much for showing us the exhibit and all," he said, just a little too forcefully. "Let''s get out of here before they have me swaddled up," he whispered furiously to James.


    ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


    It was dusk, when they exited the Galleria; the orange rays of the sun''s dying light reflecting in beautiful colors off the pearly sides of the building, and dancing flame along the surface of the ponds that surrounded it.


    Noah had leaned his weight on James as they had walked out; truth be told, he did feel a bit dizzy and weak. He pushed himself away now, trying to remain steady on his own. "Thanks for that," he said, rubbing the wound on his head once more. "I feel bad for worrying the guy, but...."


    He fell silent as he realized that James was staring at him intently, piercingly. "So," James murmured. "That''s what''s got you so bothered."


    "What do you mean....?"


    "The Manu. What else, Noah? You konked out as soon as you saw them." James stood there, arms folded, small black cape fluttering around him in the evening breeze that drove itself out to the ocean, considering, tapping his foot. "I don''t suppose," he said finally, "That you''ve....taken a look at the Strategos Public Announcement lately."


    "I...yes! Have you? Have you seen it...?"


    "Yes, I had a while ago. I do keep track of these sorts of things. I remember worrying, at the time, what your reaction might be to seeing it. You are a sensitive soul, after all."


    Noah blushed furiously. "I am not."


    "Oh, don''t deny it. It''s part of what makes you so charming." James offered him a small smile. And Noah, despite it all, felt an immense sense of relief. James knew, and was taking it in stride; and if James knew, well...it made Noah feel as if maybe things weren''t quite so bad. There was something about James'' smile, his self-assurance, that was comforting; something about it that made him feel safe. His confidence was, in a way, infectious. "So, what did you think of it?"


    "What did I think of it..." Noah muttered. "I - it was terrifying. I had no idea the Manu were looking for the bot''s creators...I mean, James, don''t you feel completely helpless...? We can''t do anything other than rely on the bots..."


    "Ah," James said cryptically. "But what if...that''s not really true?''


    Noah stared at him, dumbfounded.


    "What if," James continued, "There was a way to do more than just entrust our fate to the bots."


    How, was the word on Noah''s lips. What could we possibly do?


    But before he could say anything, a bot came sliding down the embankment into the park that led to the Galleria building; zipping rapidly across the surface of a pond, leaving nothing but ripples in its wake. It was the color and shape of a smooth egg, though nearly as tall as he was, floating just six inches above the surface of the ground. A medibot.


    "I have received a report of a human in critical medical condition!" it announced as it floated rapidly towards them. "Is one of you in need of assistance?"


    "No, no no no no," Noah said, holding his hands up to ward the bot off, as James suppressed an amused chuckle.


    The large egglike robot paused in front of them, then announced: "Head injury detected! Please prepare for evacuation." With a hiss, the upper quarter of its eggshell swung open; from the inside of it, a floating red stretcher rapidly inflated itself, falling to the ground within moments. "Please lie down on the stretcher!" the bot burbled happily.


    Noah cursed inwardly. Penny would surely hear about this now; and it would worry her even more to hear that he had refused medical treatment than if he simply went alone. "Damn it," he said, deciding to curse outwardly as well, turning to James as if the man could help him.


    But James did nothing other than wave him off with a small smile. "Go on," he said. "You wouldn''t want to worry your bots. We can talk more some other time."