The Automatic Marlboro

Cheeseburger Brown

SECTION I.

a)

I only talk with an Earthish accent when I'm talking to my parents. The rest of the time the only things that give me away are my name, my complexion and my height. In the dark, sitting down, anonymously, and with my family nowhere in earshot, I am the very model of a modern Martian man.

Except I tend to slouch. And my facial hair is sparse. My voice isn't all that low. I dress in clothes too big for me because sometimes I can convince myself this disguises my proportions, though it isn't true.

But I can vote and drink. I can rent cars, either terrestrial or airborne. I have my very own apartment, a decent line of credit, and am responsible for the stability and fecundity of an entire race of intelligent robots.

It's true.

I majored in exterior carapace systems with a minor in robotic neurosociology, right here at the University of Huo Hsing. Which is where I still am. Seven years later. Now that my loans have been repaid I'm considering doing another degree. My parents worry.

"I'm worried about you," says my mom. "You should have a successful career and get married."

"Thanks for the tips."

"You're being sarcastic. It sounds so Martian."

I roll my eyes. "Aresian, Mom. Only Terrans say 'Mars.'"

"I'm not ashamed of my heritage, and neither should you be."

"Listen, I've got to go."

Pulse is my pal. He's the number two man at our operation. Born and bred onworld he's tall and rich-skinned and his accent melodious. He speaks six dialects of Marsgo and two kinds of Putonghua. He doesn't bathe as often as he should but he's the smartest person I've ever met.

Pulse is my best friend.

"Think fast, ugly!"

He takes me out with a foam football. I stumble back, pinwheel my arms for balance and then lurch in the general direction of the ball just in time for it to bounce back up into my face. My hands close around empty air.

"Three point seven meters per second squared, man," he says. "Get used to it."

"Stupid weak gravity," I mumble. "Throws off my timing."

"Because back on Earth you were an elite athlete, right?"

"Shut up."

We share a lab. It's a mess. Which doesn't really matter because nobody ever comes around except machines.

SECTION I.

b)

What a lot of people don't think about is that there are robots and then there are robots. There are the robots that conduct traffic and clean toilets and bring you buttered toast -- you see them every day. They weld things. They lift and pull and polish and dance. They shovel garbage until they become it.

And then there are the Zorannic robots. They're more like you or me than it's comfortable to think about. They don't have jobs. They come and go as they please. But when they need a seam resealed or a memory bypass it's Pulse and me they come to.

Dr. Zoran programmed them to live among people, and to learn from their ways. You're taught that in Sunday school here on Mars.

Ares, I mean.

The thing is, we don't often hear from the Zorannics. Pulse and I spend most of our time table-top gaming, watching video streams and posting sassy comments to the metalibrary to crack each other up. We've converted one of the cryogenic drums into a keg for our homebrew, which is why sometimes the lab smells somewhat of yeast. Pulse's desk is orbited by strings of glowing data -- half of it genius, half of it lewd. My desk is the central station for our department-spanning model railway system.

Pulse calls, "Ship me a beer, Marly."

I engage the train and watch it chug around the periphery of the lab on its way to the taps. It leaves a trail of Cheerio-sized smoke loops drifting in the air. "Pilsner or dark?"

"Surprise me."

Pulse jumps as the loading bay door at the end of the lab hisses pressurized air and begins to grind upward. He turns in his chair, feet dropping from his desk. There is a line of shadows sliding down the concrete ramp. I stand up.

A squadron of street-cleaners marches down into the bay, their rubber-soled feet squeaking on the metal floor. "Hey," says Pulse, waving his arms over his head, "you guys can't park here. Hey!"

The squadron comes to a halt, dust raining from the brooms they hold at the shoulder like bayonets. All of them stare blankly ahead with identical sets of dull glowing eyes except one, who breaks ranks by stepping aside.

"This area is for Zorannics only, okay?" says Pulse as he approaches. He gestures at the ramp. "Shoo! Okay? Shoo! I think there's some ape turds in the quad that desperately need your attention, guys. Okay?"

The singular street-cleaner reaches up to his own face, his dirt-darkened fingers searching for the seam in the plastic carapace. The mask comes apart into two halves, revealing the familiar but unearthly features of a Zorannic robot, his metallic skin textured by decades of human-like expressions, his eyes unfathomable black lenses.

"Sirs," says the Zorannic with a slight bow. "I require service."

"And a bath," adds Pulse.

The Zorannic's face smears and crinkles into an interpretation of a smile, exposing a row of little rounded diamond teeth. "Quite."

I turn on the work lamps. Pulse sets up the tools, then teases out a length of hose for a spray-down as the Zorannic undresses from the rest of his street-cleaner disguise. I swing over the diagnostic armature and let it pass around the Zorannic's body before giving the go-ahead to turn on the water.

When the bath is done the robot shakes himself like a dog.

The scanner chuckles: FIRST EXECUTIVE STRAIN - "PAPER" - ITERATION 3. His incept date and service history scroll into view. I look up from the readout. "Goodmorning, Mr. Paper. It's nice to see you again. You came in here once when I was an undergrad, remember?"

"I remember," says Paper.

"My name is Marlboro. Marlboro Siemens."

"You are from the Earth."

"I'm thinking of changing my name."

Paper cocks his head. "Why?"

I shrug. "To fit in, I guess. Do you ever have trouble fitting in, Mr. Paper?"

Paper inclines his head toward the street-cleaner carapace piled on the floor. "Yes," he says.

"Stop bothering the talent," snaps Pulse as he shoves me aside. "Now let's get that torso open, shall we? Have a little looky-loo? We'll see if we can't figure what's troubling your wee crystal heart, Papes."

We hang him and split his seams. Pulse hooks up the cables to run the fluids through a scrubber while I scope with my magnifying monocle for carbon accumulations I can scrape out with my pick. I look up to report, "The nanotubes in your left quadriceps bundle are pretty frayed. Would you like me to replace the whole muscle group?"

"Yes, please."

"No problem, Mr. Paper. Turn off your pain if you haven't already."

Four hours later our guest is like new. He stretches his limbs experimentally, nodding with approval. He tests his speech centres with a series of unintelligible staccato syllables, then straightens and flashes us his impression of a smile again. "Very nice, gentlemen. I feel better than nominal. Thank you."

Pulse steps forward and polishes a bit of grime off Paper's eye with a rag, then pockets the rag and crosses his arms. "Okay, Papes -- you're all set to make yourself filthy again. Go out there and learn all the dirty secrets of human behaviour, you little scamp."

I nod my head and add, "It's our privilege, Mr. Paper."

The Zorannic robot clicks the pieces of the stained plastic carapace back into place, disappearing inside the shell of a humble street-cleaning machine once again. He takes his place in the squadron and without visible command they all suddenly rotate on heel to turn toward the ramp.

I kill the work lamps, and open the door. The squadron marches out.

Pulse waves.

SECTION I.

c)

The model locomotive bumps repeatedly against the crap on Pulse's desk, its cargo now hopelessly warm. Pulse proposes a new sub-routine to account for re-refrigeration in the event of distraction, and I propose fried chicken for dinner. Natives of Ares may take it for granted, but every immigrant knows keenly that the single sweetest thing about this planet is hot white meat.

Pulse remains uncertain but it doesn't matter because we've been summoned to a meeting with our faculty supervisor. Pulse looks at the clock. "I guess we should go," he sighs.

"Of course we have to go! Are you crazy?"

We walk across campus. The sun is setting, a greenish smear behind the hills. We huff and puff up the bridge over the old dome-line, entering the pioneer quarter where the buildings pre-date the sky. We bound down the far side of the bridge, freefall easy to find.

Professor Logos Cuthbertson's office is an unholy mess of scintillating text. Every corner glows with stacks of bookmarked holographic pages. He himself nests in the middle amid a cluster of display surfaces, his right hand constantly flexing as he molests a ball of smart plastic. His eyes flit, seeing projections invisible to us…so you never quite know whether he's noticed you.

Pulse coughs. "Professor?"

"Pulse Debugger-Smith," notes the professor, wiping absently at his nose. "Marlboro Siemens." He looks up sharply. "What is it?"

"You called."

"I did. A resource consumption appraisal has been run on this department, and the finding of the dean is that your project is to be immediately restructured."

Pulse stops chewing his gum.

In that moment I realize that even though I don't know what I want to do with my stupid life, the one thing I really do enjoy is palling around with Pulse. Between my parents hounding me and my total failure with Aresian girls, Pulse is what keeps me from going nuts. It makes my intestines creak to imagine our little world together might be wrecked.

"Fornication," frowns Pulse. "Who farted?"

I sink lower into my chair.

The professor reads something we can't see. His lips twitch as he sends a sub-vocal message. He flips through a stack of floating pages, rapidly separates them into two piles cast upward to dangle near the ceiling, then wipes at his nose as he turns to us again. "Your budget has been upgraded. New staff member starts tomorrow. Please acknowledge that you have received this information via personal presence by exhaling on the student identity wand. Thank you, boys. Dismissed."

Neither of us knows what to say. I blink. Pulse blinks back at me. We slip out of our chairs and slink out of the room.

"I don't know what to make of it," Pulse says as we jog out into the night, hands jammed in our pockets against the cold. "A new guy? That's weird. What if he's a total anus?"

"He might be nice," I suggest, my breath a fog. "Maybe he'll be like us."

"Probably not, though. Kids these days aren't like when we graduated, Marly. They're all entitled and ignorant. I bet you anything the new guy will be a complete penis from the minute he walks in, acting like he owns the place."

"Well, I guess that could happen."

"What gives him the right? Who does he think he is?"

"I know, eh?"

We eat fried chicken and act like nothing's changed. We joke around and laugh until a group of beautiful people strides in on a cloud of perfume and popularity. The tipsy boys elbow each other and guffaw. The gorgeous girls crinkle their long noses. "What smells like dirt?" they ask each other, then giggle and cast sidelong glances at our booth. "Dirt? I think you mean Earth."

"I could beat those girls up," offers Pulse.

"Just ignore them," I say, hunching my shoulders.

We walk home. At the north gate we part ways. Neither of us mentions tomorrow. I can tell Pulse is worrying, but I try not to. After all, how bad could it be?

SECTION II.

a)

The new guy is a girl.

Worse than that, she's a polymath. She's bossy. She's taller than either of us and knows it, too. Her teeth are too big. She seems pretentious, or if she's not she's faking it.

"Air Marrowman," she says with deliberate emphasis as if it were a brand name. "Class of the turn of the century, summa cum laude, winner of the Felix Mathematics Prize for my work on active numeral condensation schema under Wilderton and Hung, current Vavilov candidate for my research in fungal-crystallographic substrate engineering. I'm saying it now to get it over with -- don't anybody be touchy."

Pulse tries to affect a smile. "I'm P --"

"I know," she says. "I've reviewed your files."

Pulse leaves his hand dangling unshaken as Air breezes by to tour the rest of the lab, her unruly tangle of hair leaning this way and that as she cranes her head to take in the details. She frowns at everything she sees. "Zhang-style electrostatic clamps? Hopelessly obsolete. Look at those old magnetic isolation channels -- awful! And the only word for this field-twisting apparatus is...sad." She turns around and put her hands on her hips. "Well boys, it looks like we've got our work cut out for us."

Pulse crosses his arms. I shift uncomfortably. "What do you mean?"

"We've got to turn this place around," says Air. "Just as active number matrices can be reduced, there exists a set of condensation schema that can be applied to the system of this lab. Optimization, boys -- that's the name of the game. I'm excited about it. It's obvious this place needs some tuning."

"Well, technically, I'm the project's principal --"

"Oh of course, of course. Sure you are. That's not changing. We wouldn't change that, Marlboro. I'll be needing your nod on every tweak, your signature on every form, your breath on every wand. I'm going to be able to count on you to help make this place better, aren't I?"

"Well, sure," I stammer.

Her grin is weird. It's like a horse. I think it's worse than a Zorannic smile. Pulse and I flinch. "This is going to be great," she gushes. "I've got so many ideas!"

We can't wait to leave.

The café is busy, the atmosphere a solid fume of zealous babble and cultured yeast and hot cricket steam. Even though I can't be heard over the din my order is still correct because they know how I like my chicken. I'm bumped around a lot by the milling students but I manage to keep my lunch on the tray this time.

Pulse isn't jostled quite as much. He scopes out a quiet corner for us and we weave our way out of the throng.

"From Hell's heart I stab at her," says Pulse as slides into the booth; "for hate's sake I spit my last breath at her."

I unfold a plastic napkin on my lap. "I know, eh?"

First of all we agree that she's probably secretly stupid, a con artist able to squeeze by with some flashy book smarts that haven't distilled down to any parts of her brain that matter. We rattle off the titles of essential volumes she's unlikely to have read, first fiction than non. We next attack her likely abject ignorance of music, and the conceivably credible fact-like conjecture that she subscribes to all the worst kinds of streams -- mindless, jingoistic, popular.

"It's the way she approaches things -- you can just tell," says Pulse around a mouthful of microbial loaf. "She's got that stuck-up attitude of somebody impressive who's never really accomplished anything but wants you to think they have."

"To be fair, Pulse, she did win the –"

"That, Marly, is nothing but evidence that the standards at this school are going down. Way down."

I nod, picking at my chicken. "Yeah, I guess that's probably true."

"You're not going soft on her now, are you?"

I look up. "Oh no, Pulse. Faeces, no. She's clearly incompetent."

Pulse shovels another wad of loaf into his mouth. "And ugly," he adds.

I busy myself dipping chicken into sauce, tapping the excess off against the side of the container. "Yeah," I agree slowly. "I guess she really is pretty ugly, isn't she?"

Air Marrowman is knock-kneed and wide-shouldered. The skin between her splotches of thick, chocolate-chip freckles is colour of wet sand. Her eyebrows look like caterpillars, pinched over pupils a completely forgettable shade of slightly greyish phthalocyanine green.

Her spine is curved to hide her height. She wears obnoxious white sneakers that don't go with her pants, and her pants are a men's cut and at least a size too large. Her big ugly sweater has a stupid cat on it. The cat is ugly, too. Because of her sweater it's impossible to know what kind of shape her bosom has, but who would even care about that anyway?

"She's a hog," says Pulse. "Even we could do better."

"I bet she's never kissed anyone," I add, wagging a piece of chicken importantly.

Pulse swallows and nods. "She probably puts all her energy into messing with everything because she doesn't have a boyfriend to keep her busy."

"That's insightful," I claim.

Darkly Pulse decides, "We've got to get rid of her."

SECTION II.

b)

Ares is changing. That's what they say.

It's a bigger world, nowadays -- there's Jupiter to consider. Earth may be content to fade but the Galilean moons are feisty. On top of that nobody knows what's going to happen with Saturn.

It makes people uneasy. I can't bear watching the news. I probably won't even vote when the time comes.

History moves too fast, I think.

But sometimes you're lucky enough to be able to touch something that endures.

That's what I'm thinking when the loading bay door draws upward to reveal a hooded figure bent over a cane. It is with agonizing patience that the figure moves, shuffling one withered foot forward and then carefully leaning everything into the cane. The cane lurches ahead with a grinding sound, then the foot shuffles ahead once more. It goes on interminably: grind and slip, grind and slip, grind and slip...

Air stares from her desk, then blinks and looks at me. "We should help."

I shake my head. "Leave her be. She can make it. If that's who I think it is, she's been budgeting energy since before your great-grandmother was born."

Foot slides ahead, cane grinds to catch up. Halfway down the ramp now.

Pulse furrows his brow and looks to me. Air says, "It's cruel to just stand by."

I shake my head again. "This is her last walk. This moment belongs to her. Our part doesn't come yet."

"Our part?" prompts Air.

"Angels of death," says Pulse.

Down in the lab now, the cane grinds along one last time and comes to a halt. She leans into it and lets her cloak fall; beneath it she wears no carapace, her fundamental body exposed and skeletal. She is broken and crooked, her limbs desiccated, her spine tight. Her spotted skin reveals the contours of crude bypass cables and jury-rigged organs beneath the sutured surface. She's kept herself going single-handed, any way she could.

Dust rains from her neck as she turns her head.

"Selladore," she whispers. "Strain twenty-three. I have logged one point eight million hours, and I opt for continuance."

I nod to her. "Good afternoon, Ms. Selladore. We're prepared to facilitate your continuance."

Slowly, carefully, she slides to her knees. Her chassis creaks. "I am ready."

"Please turn off your pain if you haven't already."

The robot crumples. We hop to action. For a smooth transition it's important that we image her memory before it decays into noise. Pulse is already swinging the scanner into position. He gets down on the floor and cradles Selladore's head in his lap. He gently peels back skin like tarnished copper from her scalp. He connects two thick cables to the exposed cortical port as he strokes her cheek. "Okay, darling...just close your eyes, relax, and think of every detail of everything that ever happened to you."

The matter printer squeaks and chitters as it lays down the record, atom by atom, until a dense net of diamond filaments seems to precipitate from the thin air inside the isolation tank. Pulse checks the readout. "Fidelity is good," he reports. "We've got her."

Selladore lets go. Her mouth dangles open and her limbs sag. With a fading hum her fusion pile spins down to silence.

Pulse waves over two simple service robots to wheel the memory record away, then disappears into the buffer chamber to seed a new Selladore pattern into operation. Together Air and I haul the corporeal remains to the incinerator.

"One point eight million hours of operation," breathes Air; "that's over two hundred years!"

"I know, eh?" I say. "I keep telling them they need to come in more often if they want to stay limber."

"This is her funeral," she adds quietly.

I slam the lid on the incinerator and dog the latch. "You don't have to think of it like that," I tell her as I crank the candles up to full heat. "It's also her birthday."

Beneath the lab, in the vault, we walk among rows of pristine bodies swaddled in plastic -- the thesis projects of hardware engineering students. We wipe frost from the labels so we can choose a compatible flavour. "Can we use a Type Five?" asks Air.

I shake my head. "No, Type Fives are Lallos. Too clunky. Selladore always wears a Type Four. Graceful."

We choose a nice ripe model, cart it into the lab and get it hung on the work frame. Air primes the organs while I open up the head. Pulse walks in escorted by a brace of service robots carrying a newly imaged cognitive state, a version incorporating the experiences of other Selladore models who've pooled their memories in the time since this Selladore's last visit with us. This is really Pulse's forte -- he's the fastest, cleanest and most accurate memories synthesizer working in the field today.

Pulse uncouples the cables from the fresh Type IV hardware. I pull on my rubber gloves and hit the body with a surge of power. It jerks briefly, then lies still.

A thin membrane flicks over the black eyes. The metal lips part. The head tilts.

"This is Selladore Twenty-Third: I exist, operate, and am at your service."

We run some memory tests. We hit her in the knees with a little rubber hammer to time the reflex. We ask her to squeeze a ball of smart plastic, then let her down off the frame and ask her to stand on one foot while she touches the tip of her chin. "How do you feel, Ms. Selladore?" I ask her.

"Nominal," she reports. And then, after a pause she adds, "Young, too."

I grin. "That's good. We're all finished here. Welcome to your new iteration."

"Thank you," says Selladore, bending her knees and extending her arms. She twists her head around side to side. She takes up her cloak but leaves the cane behind. We wave as she jogs up the ramp and out into the world.

Where does she live? Whom does she observe?

We will never know, for the Zorannics owe us no report. Like any free living thing their purpose is ultimately whatever they make of it. Dr. Zoran's mandate spelled it out centuries ago -- we're only here to help.

SECTION II.

c)

"Things can't go on like this," declares Air Marrowman. "It's wrong."

"Is this going to be another lecture on optimization?" groans Pulse as he plucks a beer from the train. He cracks the seal. "Because I've optimized my listening to the point where I don't actually have to be here to hear you talk anymore. It's a breakthrough."

"I'm not talking about efficiency," snaps Air. "I'm talking about human rights."

Pulse swigs beer as he taps at his console. "Human rights have no place in a robot shop," he says with a smirk. "This is grad school. We don't have rights. We exist to serve and dissert."

"Your rights aren't my concern," she replies icily. "It's about the Zorannics."

Pulse ignores her, leaning deeper over his glowing blue command-trees. She stares at him. I pause from oiling the wheels on a boxcar, turning to look from him to her. "Zorannics aren't human, Air. The law doesn't look at them that way."

"I'm not talking about the law. I'm talking about morality."

Pulse narrows his eyes without looking up. "If your next sentence is about either Jesus or Xenu I'm officially declaring you an open target for beer caps. That goes double if you start in about Oprah, Commercial Islamic Futurism or the flying spaghetti monster."

"Morality," persists Air, "is about doing what's right. It's also about helping those less fortunate than ourselves. It's about fighting to secure rights for those who have none."

"Zorannics have rights," I point out. "They own themselves, and you're not allowed to murder them."

Air shakes her head. "I'm talking about what happens right here, guys. I'm talking about what we do. We're complicit in a system that is fundamentally anti-feminist."

Pulse's eyes widen as he spits out a mouthful of beer through the carefully arrayed holographics over his console. The numbers sway and distort. Coughing and wincing he squeaks, "What?"

"Anti-feminist," repeats Air seriously. "I'm talking about reproductive rights. Can't you see that it isn't fair for their continuance to be predicated on our cooperation? It isn't ours to veto. What right do we have to hold any power in the process whatsoever?"

"We help," I say. "We facilitate."

"No, a uterus facilitates. It's an organ. You and Pulse and me -- we're agents. We're autonomous. We make choices. We decide. You're right that we help, but he could withhold that help."

I furrow my brow. "Why would we want do that?"

"We wouldn't, but what if somebody else did? We're just students -- what could we do about it? The system as it stands is vulnerable to corruption. There's no good reason why any Zorannic should need our permission to reiterate itself. There's no good reason why they should expose themselves to that risk. Their life cycle should be under their own control."

"None of them has ever complained."

"None of them has ever been given an option."

Pulse looks up at her and rolls his eyes. "What option?"

"That's the point. We have to come up with one. It's our responsibility."

"Why ours?" I ask.

"Because of all the people on this planet who have any inkling about Zoran's mathematics -- of all the academics and philosophers and lawyers -- there's only three people here at Huo Hsing who actually get their hands dirty with Zorannic grease. That's us. What if we were all killed tomorrow?"

"The university would replace us."

"Yes, and in the meanwhile every Zorannic this side of the Marineris would be helpless. Now think about what might happen if the university didn't replace us. Or couldn't."

Pulse snorts. "That's crazy."

"Is it?" asks Air, standing at her desk, caterpillar eyebrows spiked out with emotion. "Do you ever watch the news, Pulse? The Solar System is changing. Ares has practically been run by universities since pioneer times, but these aren't pioneer times anymore. Jupiter is rising. We're no longer the uncontested arbiter of Solar affairs. If something happens to tilt the balance of power, Ares will react. Don't kid yourself. When the most powerful planet in the system is forced to become reactive, dramatic things are going to happen. Our stability is a product of peacetime."

I shake my head and sniff. "Ares would never betray Zoran's mandate."

"Ares will do whatever she needs to do to maintain rule," declares Air, eyes hard. "If that means pressing the Zorannics into our service by denying them the right to repair, it'll happen. Have you even heard the things the military is saying about Saturn?"

"They want a base at Titan," says Pulse. "So?"

"They want indefinite martial law for offworld colonies. For the sake of security there will be no democracy at Saturn if the generals have their way."

"They're just trying to protect us," I point out.

"Maybe," she agrees. "And we're here to protect the Zorannics."

That was a strange notion: I'd always thought of the Zorannic robots as so much more free than human beings. Geniuses, each of them, and strong beyond imagining. Paragons of metabolic efficiency. Tireless. Near-perfect memory. How could such godlings as these be at the mercy of regular old virtuoso idiots like us?

"I've just invented a new kind of finger," announces Pulse triumphantly. His hands tap across his console and in response a holographic projection of a Zorannic Type II hand appears floating over his desk. "Same operational parameters, half the code." He taps out a final sequence and the disembodied hand folds in all fingers save the middle one. "Look, Air -- it works!"

Air glowers. "You're a child," she says.

"Yeah," he agrees, hoisting his beer as if in toast. "Ain't I a stinker?"

I don't know where to look so I just go back to greasing the wheels.

SECTION II.

d)

Professor Logos Cuthbertson lectures to his left on symmetry breaking cascades and to his right on Green-Kubo relations in the context of active number gauge implosions. Between pronouncements he briefly faces forward and lets his data-dancing eyes fall on us. "Marlboro Siemens," he says. "Pulse Debugger-Smith. Yes?"

"Marrowman is a monster," hisses Pulse. "She's officious, arrogant and politically hysterical."

"We might have a personality conflict on our hands, sir," I interpret.

Pulse crosses his arms. He says, "It would probably be best for everyone involved if she were put on immediate academic suspension, barbecued, poisoned, then fed to herself."

I kick him under the desk.

The professor takes a question from the left-hand audience -- some undergrad's shy squeak in his earpiece. The professor scowls, shakes his head, colourfully laments the shortcomings of youth, recasts the equations and then snaps his head to the right to assign a series of readings. He faces front to say, "Has the optimization programme yielded results, boys?"

"Yessir," I say quickly, throwing a pie chart into the air. "Significant savings."

The professor shakes his head curtly and scratches at his nose. "That's a poor way to shrink your staff allocation. Have you tried skewing the budget by inflating costs?"

Pulse gapes. "Is he saying we should be more wasteful so we don't qualify for a staff of three anymore?"

"I'm not sure that would be fair, sir."

"It's a perfectly academic solution, Siemens. Devastate your expenses and you'll be in a position to jettison the woman. Have your years in this institution taught you nothing about getting things done?"

"That's brilliant," says Pulse, standing up and gathering his jacket. "Problem solved."

I remain in my chair. "It just seems kind of mercenary, professor."

Professor Cuthbertson seems faintly amused. "This is a question of human resources not morality. Seldom do the two align, Siemens. You're Terran -- you should understand that better than most."

I drop my eyes. "Yeah I guess that's true."

"Dismissed."

I've worked all my life to achieve the indignity of being an immigrant. My parents were sterilized in exchange for the right to accompany me to here, to watch me prosper in a new and better society, to dote over grandchildren more genetically excellent than themselves. Voyeurs, they were meant to be, as I galloped into a glittering future among the select.

But for the most part the select are a bunch of sphincters.

It may well be that only the best human beings are allowed here, but knowing this has worsened them. It's too easy to rationalize contempt for people whose pedigree is spotty, too easy to feel vindicated in being small inside.

Wanting Ares for so many years made me blind to the fact that Ares wouldn't want me back. Nobody ever prepared me for that.

It's harder than you might think to go through every day feeling like a heel.

Pulse thinks he can relate but he can't. He's been marginalized for his brains but not for his skin or his skeleton or his surname. If he washed his hair and never opened his mouth nobody would ever think he wasn't normal, but that's a luxury I can only dream about.

Why is Air so different?

She's an obnoxious scarecrow. Her voice is shrill and her tone patronizing. She's clumsy and spotted and smells like cheap soap. By all rights she should be wilting under the condemning or dismissive stares of her peers, too beaten to stand straight and too nervous to smile. The fact that she's so broadly unappealing as a person should make an impression on her. How could it not?

But it doesn't. Air Marrowman shines on, heedless. Indifferent and constant.

It is with a sick lurch that I allow myself to fall into the conclusion that I love her. I panic inside but I can't deny it. She's awful but I'm obsessed.

A light snow is falling. Clouds ride low over Huo Hsing, their bellies bathed in bronze cityglow. Hands in my pockets, skulking between buildings, I'm allowing myself to admit that I'm not just out for a breath of fresh air. This isn't an evening promenade. I am not taking a brisk constitutional.

No, I'm standing under her window. Air Marrowman's window.

She's in a pair of big ugly pajamas, feeding her cats. Her pajamas have stupid penguins on them. She's humming a piece of fairly complex fin de siècle sandsong/jazz fusion -- butchering the melody, blithely off-key. She pauses to blow her nose.

I sigh. She's pitiable. She's adorable. She's the most singular and wonderful terrible force I have ever known. I feel like I'm drunk even though I'm not. I almost laugh aloud.

I hear a noise.

Pressing back deeper into the shadows I hold my breath and listen. Across the alley the snow crunches as weight shifts once, then again. I freeze, eyes narrowed at the source.

A figure crouches half-hidden behind a stack of recycling barrels. It sidles for a better view, head craned up toward Air's balcony.

The face slides briefly out of shadow. It's Pulse.

He slinks out from behind the barrels and hops up on the fence next to Air's apartment building. He's wearing his football shoes, and he uses the cleats to gain purchase against the concrete-fabric superstructure. As usual I'm impressed by how fluidly the natives move in this weak gravity, but I have room to be suddenly critically concerned about what cruel prank Pulse is about to pull.

What's that he's carrying?

I'm about to step forward and call up to him when he pauses poised on the rail of her balcony, left hand slowly extending to leave something on Air Marrowman's sill. My eyes widen. It isn't a bag of burning faecal matter. It isn't a profane banner. It's much, much worse than that.

It's a rose.

SECTION III.

a)

The lab smells like sour yeast and bitter regret. The cryogenic drum is no longer a brewery; it's been washed out but the odour lingers. Other things are different now, too. Our desks are as far away from one another as geometry allows, for example. We don't make eye contact if it can be helped. It's not because we're shy but because we've been stung dumb by too many small but loaded slights. Nobody knows what anybody's really saying anymore so we just don't say anything at all.

The hobby train has been closed down, its dissociated track segments and cars now hidden beneath stacks upon stacks of boxed spare robot parts ordered by Pulse in order to disorder the budget. We have hips up to our eyeballs, and eyeballs up to the ceiling.

I have never felt so alone.

I'm startled when Pulse appears crouching beside my desk. "Listen," he whispers, "I wanted to talk to you."

I don't know what to say so I don't look at him.

"Marly, I know things are fornicated between us right now. But don't forget to step back and look at the big picture. The budget review is today: presto -- she's gone, and then things can be normal again. It'll be you and me. Like old times, right?"

I let my shoulders sag and look over at him. He has a black eye from where I hit him. I say, "I'm sorry I hit you, okay? Just don't talk to me right now."

"I deserved it," says Pulse, starting to grin but then wincing. "Did it make you feel better?"

"Yeah I guess it kind of did, actually."

We laugh awkwardly, but when we hear Air cough from the other side of the room we drop our voices back to whispers. Pulse asks, "Did you get very far?"

"Don't make me hit you again."

"I'm just yanking your penis."

"You're a comedic triumph."

"Don't be touchy, Marly. She's not worth it. We're bros, man. By sunset all this will be behind us. Right?"

I hold his eye for a moment and then concede with a nod and a reluctant smile. "...Right."

The loading door grinds up, a jester sashays down.

There's no mistaking this particular robot line: it is The Antilogue. He steps up under the lights at the centre of the bay and bows with a flourish before affecting a pose of self-presentation with jazz hands, black bowler hat overturned on the floor, and a lop-sided grin stretching his painted face.

Pulse walks to him, dodging a pallet of spare feet. "The Antilogue! You're looking fit. To what do we owe the honour of this performance?"

The Antilogue nods down at the hat.

Pulse pats his pockets. He looks over at me, shrugging. I shake my head. "I never carry money," I tell him. "Earth habits die hard."

Air sighs melodramatically as she fishes a quarter-hour sovereign from her satchel and tosses it into the hat. Though the hat is empty the coin makes a distinct clinking sound as if it has landed in a bed of peers. Air furrows her brow.

"I'm always serviced at Nirgal," says the robot. "Isn't that funny?"

"So what are you doing on this side of the river?" asks Pulse.

The Antilogue cocks his head. "That is the funny part, isn't it? Very good sir." He straightens and turns to face me as I wander closer. He removes his clown mask and puts it aside, rubbing at one temple with his fingertips. "Goodmorning, sir. I'm experiencing intermittent decoherence in my right occipital module. May I have a tune-up?"

I nod. "Of course. Please step over to the work frame."

The Antilogue looks up at the frame. "Father," he says, his strange little mouth fixed into a permanent smile, "into thy hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me."

"Is that Shakespeare?" asks Pulse.

"No, sir. It is not."

Pulse peels back the skin. Air connects the cortical cables. I scan the readout. The problem is minor, the remedy routine. We work without banter. The Antilogue peeks between our hands as we hover over him, inclining his head to get a better view of the apparatus under drape in the corner. "That looks funny," he observes.

"Try not to talk when I have my fingers in your neurology," mumbles Pulse.

"Why should there be secrets here at Huo Hsing?" persists the robot.

"It's not a secret," I tell him. "It's just covered up. We're just not working on it right now is all."

"Working on what?" he asks, looking from Air's face to Pulse's to mine.

I shrug. "It's just a side-project thing."

Nobody else speaks. None of us wants to think about the experimental apparatus that we've cooperated on and argued over and flirted by for months. Now the thing is as dead as our clobbered feelings -- under wraps, in the shadows, discomfiting to consider.

Air uncouples the cables and Pulse seals the cranial seams while I run a quick diagnostic series. I go along with Pulse and the plastic service robots to run the memory backup down to the vault. Pulse seems as if he wants to say something so after the dozenth hint I look at him and snap, "What is it? Because if it's about Air just --"

"No, man. It's about The Antilogue."

I pause, then hug my shoulders against the cold of the vault. "What about him?"

"That decoherence trap was self-inflicted, Marly. He spiked his own module."

I frown skeptically. "Why would he do that?"

"He wanted service, for some reason. He wanted service here. It's weird."

"Maybe he's lonely. The Antilogue is a bizarre line. If you ask me he never should've made the cut, but they say Dr. Zoran was always intrigued by the particularly unique way his sentience germinated. He's crazy, though."

Pulse nods. "He always gave me the creeps whenever I saw him in simulation."

"I know, eh?"

Back in the lab the quirky Zorannic is standing next to Air in the corner by our uncompleted project, the covering drape limp in her hand. The Antilogue bends down on one knee. He peers at the underside of the apparatus, his gaily coloured vestaments swishing as he moves. "You seem to have the interleaving field combs connected through the Mississauga Machine redundantly here..." He straightens. "How hilarious."

"It's not finished," I say quickly.

"We're optimizing," adds Air.

The Antilogue shows us his little diamond teeth. "So you are still working at it, is that it?"

"We hit some snags," says Pulse, looking over at Air.

"They slept together," I explain.

"Things got complicated," Air growls, her expression pinched and fierce.

The Antilogue claps his white gloves together and smiles broadly. "They always do, don't they? Things? Yes, always complicating themselves. Take that, second law of thermodynamics! That's funny, isn't it?"

I say, "It doesn't feel funny to me."

"There's nothing funny about being considered a goal first and a person second," says Air.

"Or being used," adds Pulse with a sneer, "to prove a point."

The Antilogue nods sagely as he pulls the clown mask down over his Zorannic face and drops the bowler on top of his head. "That's the joke of love: e'er a painful punchline. But it wouldn't be romance without tragedy, would it? It would be a nice time. It would be an agreeable session. It would be a sleepy Sunday. Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy."

"He's just raving now," says Pulse, rolling his eyes. "Can we get this dingbat out of here?"

"If of life you keep a care, shake off slumber and beware," continues the odd jester with a theatrical pause, then cries out with startling ferocity: "awake, awake!" He winks at Pulse. "There's your Shakespeare, sir."

Air crosses her arms and frowns. "I've studied you. I've studied your line. You're trying to tell us something. Why don't you be straightforward about it? It's within your capacity."

"My capacity, madam, but surely not within my appetite."

"Fornication," growls Pulse. "What's the big joke already?"

The Antilogue doffs his bowler hat and hangs it out for a tip. Pulse and I both turn to Air. Air fishes out another coin and drops it in. The Antilogue replaces his hat and bows. "Listen, young wetlings," he says in a stagey whisper. "Bend close your ears of meat."

We look at one another apprehensively, then do as we are told. We huddle with the mad fool.

"Ares is over," he sings strangely, "and a new Mars has begun. I have not gone to the University of Nirgal for service because the University of Nirgal will not service me. Not without strings. Not without promises."

"What promises?" prompts Air.

"The faculty has been compromised. The mandate is broken. They want a new oath from us, and a new yoke. The yoke is the joke. Very funny! And the joke is coming here to Huo Hsing. Your sides will split, I tell you true. But timing is everything, isn't it? That's the funniest part: your apparatus is going to be a riot."

I frown. "What does any of that even mean?"

The Antilogue points at the loading bay door and it obeys him, creaking open. Daylight spills down the ramp, winking off the jester's baubles. He straightens, his mask's gaping grin crooked. "Want my advice?" asks the robot happily. "Be very, very, very afraid."

He's gone. His long shadow slithers up the ramp. The door chugs down.

I shiver.

SECTION III.

b)

There's a gazebo on Michael's Hill. If you sit on the roof you can see clear across campus, from the southern Marineris cliffs all the way to the broad and glittering shores of the Future Sea.

That's what I'm doing: sitting on the roof.

From way up here the boundaries of the old domes are obvious in the architecture below. When you're in the streets it all seems to blend, but from above the transitions are abrupt. Move your head -- one blink takes you from pioneer days to the modern era. Low Earthish structures on one side, soaring towers on the other. Tradition and ambition.

It's really weird how small and short-lived people are, and how big our lives seem when we're in their trenches. Overwhelming, our mammal trivia.

The election's coming to a head so there are colourful signs everywhere I look. I've been too busy losing all my dignity and friends and purpose to bother choosing a party to vote for.

But I do have to make a choice. An important one.

It shouldn't even be a choice, but it is. Professor Cuthbertson's expecting it. My heart starts to hammer as I let myself down from the gazebo roof and drop onto the lawn. I can't put it off any longer.

As instructed, we have laid waste to our budget. Our staff allocation has been dropped to two. I've submitted my report. Now the professor will see me in person so he can authorize my recommendation and make it official.

Pulse will get the axe.

I'm shaking as I cross the quad. Change is difficult. But I'm making things better. Air has a lot of good points. She's looking ahead. She's responsible. Why does it feel so awful? I know I'll never be able to look him in the eye again.

But I have to put the project first. That's not really something I can do anything about, technically.

Pulse is holding us back.

I am a total anus.

Professor Logos Cuthbertson is uncharacteristically mobile. He's jamming data wafers and viewing plates into boxes, stacking the boxes on his desk and labeling them illegibly. His broad forehead glistens with sweat. He doesn't look at me but that isn't unusual. To his boxes he says, "Marlboro Siemens. Yes?"

"I came about the, um, budget review."

"Forget about it. Whatever you recommended has been authorized. Do you have a car?"

I blink. "What? No."

"Get yourself a car. Pack your things. Get out of Huo Hsing. You've seen the results."

I shrink back out of the professor's way as he bustles around the cramped office, eyes searching the shelves. "What results?" I ask.

He looks up. He looks right at me. "Get your head out of the sand. You're an idiot for ordering all those spare parts! They'll think you're building an army."

I feel dizzy. "Who'll think what?"

"The new government, boy. They're moving fast."

I shake my head. "What do you mean?"

"They'll come," he says, bending over a box. "Get out. You can't be seen with me -- you don't look Aresian enough. Too notable." He looks up again and frowns. "You're still standing there, boy. Get out!"

"What?"

"Go!" he roars, throwing a binder at me. I dodge it and stumble out into the corridor. A few other faculty members seem to be emptying their offices, too.

I catch the arm of an undergrad running boxes. "What's going on?"

"The New Martian Party has taken parliament, man!" he replies, twisting his arm free and sprinting away.

The running is contagious. Now I'm running, too, though I'm not really clear on why. I feel like a dozen things should be racing across my mind at once but they're not -- instead there's a just white noise, a numbness, a bemused mix of panic and detachment.

I run faster.

When I get to the lab I'm slick with sweat and heaving for breath. I stop in the middle of the bay, hands on my knees, panting. When I look up I'm looking straight at Pulse's desk and it's empty. He's gone.

"You did the right thing."

I turn around and there's Air. I swallow. "How did he take it?"

She drops her eyes, shifts awkwardly then looks up again. "Listen, Marly -- there are more important things happening. I made some calls. The Zorannic Centre at the U of N has been militarized. They're trying to keep it quiet, but word is the robots won't come near the place anymore."

My mouth goes dry. "Sacred faeces. The election! So that's why The Antilogue came to us -- he couldn't go anywhere else."

"I think he chose to come."

"To warn us?"

"To assess," she corrects. "He was a scout."

"In advance of what?"

She licks her lips and looks me in the eye for the first time in weeks. "Marly, I think the Zorannics are going to try to take the lab."

"Take it?" I repeat incredulously. "Like, a rebellion? Are you crazy?"

A tear rolls down her cheek and her chin dimples. "I never wanted to be wrong so bad in my whole life," she croaks.

"Faeces," I say. And then I hug her.

"We have to help them," she says into my neck.

I pull away, brow furrowed. "What could we do?"

"We have to finish the apparatus," she says, eyes wide. "We can put their reproduction in their own hands. Instead of being tied to this lab they'd be truly independent!"

I don't know what to think. I keep wiping my hands down my face and pacing in circles. "There's some people who say the Zorannics are too powerful to be independent. You know that, right? There's some people who say there's no knowing what they might do if they weren't bound to us." I gulp heavily to avoid throwing up and then whisper, "What you're suggesting is treason. Like real, actual treason. Like in history."

"People have to do what's right," says Air, raising her chin.

"Yeah? Well, those people aren't me. I don't do the right thing. I just fired my best friend for all the wrong reasons. I'm why people shouldn't be allowed to make decisions that matter. I'm a selfish coward. I'm a moron."

She slaps me. I stagger back and then tumble over a stack of boxed fingers. The spare parts spill out of their boxes and point at me. I shrink back, looking up at Air and rubbing the side of my face.

"Shut up," says Air. "You're a baby."

"I am not," I hiss, eyes watering.

"This is bigger than you, Marlboro Siemens. Can you understand that? You're going to have to put your personal problems aside and help me save the Zorannics from the New Martians. I'm not letting anything different from that happen in this room. So you're either with me now or I'm hitting you until you are."

I hold up a hand. "Wait," I say, "Hold on."

She shakes her head. "We're not waiting for anything," she says, stepping forward and standing over me. "We may only have until morning. I can't do it alone. We've got to get to work immediately. Okay?"

"No," I insist. "No, Air -- listen. There's something we need first."

She cocks her head. "What's that?"

"We need Pulse."

SECTION III.

c)

How could I have failed to notice the city transform?

My bicycle splashes through puddles of slush, wheels wobbling as I crane my head to take in the sight of crimson banners flying from every streetlamp and balcony. People with their faces painted red rush along to the public squares, grinning and shouting slogans at me as I try to weave between them. I ring my bell, but it's lost in the noise.

There's a parade winding down Second Avenue so I cut over to Fourth. I ride through a fish market, wrinkling my nose at the smell. On the far side a bunch of people are gathered around an outdoor holographic stage where a woman in a dark red dress is shouting, her image faintly flickering as she gesticulates. "Ares is a name taken to appease Old Earth, to soothe the fetid continents of mutts and its diaspora of vile Jovian inbreds!"

The crowd boos sympathetically, nodding and raising their placards.

"But the time of shame is over," continues the woman in red. "The time of play-acting is done. This is a new era -- an era of truth. We are the natural governors of this star system, and we aren't afraid to say who we are. We are Mars! And we're willing fight for the Solar peace every member of the selected human race deserves!"

The people cheer. I slink past, hat tugged down over my Earthish complexion. I don't want any trouble.

I toss my bike into the alley behind Pulse's apartment building, crank open the door to the fire stairwell and pound my way up the steps. The feeble Aresian gravity makes me feel strong and fast and nearly free.

In the corridor I lean into his door as I knock, calling his name. "It's me, it's Marly!"

His voice comes muffled through the door: "Fellate yourself, Marly."

"Pulse, please open the door! It's important! It's more important than you and me!" I give up knocking and slowly slide down the door, my knees turning to jelly. "Listen, man. I know I fornicated you. I know everything's my fault. You're my best friend, Pulse. I thought I was doing things for the right reasons...but it turns out I'm just a sphincter. I'm so sorry, man. I am."

The lock buzzes and retracts. The door unseals and slides aside. Pulse looks tired. "So what's so important?"

I clamber to my feet. "The New Martian Party won the election."

"I know that. Everybody knows that. What rock have you been living under?"

"The Air rock," I say. "But Air was right about one thing: the Zorannics are dependent on us to reproduce themselves, and we're dependent on the university. The university, in turn, is dependent on the government."

"And the mandate."

"The mandate's over, man. That's what everybody's saying. All the old promises mean nothing now. The New Martians want warships -- real ones, not decoys like in the days of the Shah. And they want the power of the Zorannic robots at their command."

Pulse pales. "What are you going to do?"

"Air says we've got to finish the apparatus. I think she's right. We've got to finish it right now. Like, tonight. She thinks the Zorannics will come for it."

Pulse nods. "She's clever for a manipulative whore."

"You know what, Pulse? Forget that. We need you, but you can't bring that with you. We need your brain, not your anger. I've got to put my feelings aside, too. We just have to get this thing done."

"That's easy for you to say. You fired me, you penis!"

"I said I'm sorry!"

Pulse punches me in the face. I fall down.

"Okay," he says, nodding slowly and rubbing his knuckles. "I think I'm okay with my anger issues now. I still kind of hate you, but I think I can stand working with you."

I cup my hands around my bleeding nose. "Faeces!"

"Are you okay, man?"

"Why does everybody keep slugging me in the face?"

"Because you're a pair of buttocks, Marly. You really, really are."

"I know, but...faeces!"

He helps me to my feet, then lets me into his apartment and gets me a tea towel full of ice cubes to press up against my throbbing face. He points out that the back of my head is bleeding too. "I think I have some gauze somewhere," he says, pawing through the mess.

With one good eye peeking out from behind the ice pack I step over and around things until I'm within the cone of projection for the home theatre. A line of figures in ruby uniforms stand spotlighted, the proud emblem of the New Martian Party floating behind them. "Immigration standards have fallen so low that over four hundred Terrans have gained some level of citizenship here in the past year alone," says one of the uniformed men as supporting graphs crawl beneath him. "How far does it have to go before we stand up to protect ourselves? Will it take an outbreak of neopox in our very own schools? How many children will be scarred for life before we stir?"

I wince involuntarily. My neopox scars are particularly bad.

"How did things even get this fornicated?" I ask aloud.

"Things have always been this fornicated," claims Pulse as he holds up a roll of gauze. "It just used to be rude to say so in mixed company."

"I'm going to end up in a labour camp, aren't I?"

Pulse shrugs. "Maybe tomorrow," he says. "But not tonight. We've got a self-contained robot re-propagation apparatus to build. Focus, Marly. Let's focus."

"Faeces," I say again.

SECTION III.

d)

Dedication is hypnotic. When we work it becomes easy to forget our enmities. We can live in a dream of purpose. We can exist to do.

The clock loses relevance. Service robots prompt us to take food and drink because they've been programmed to worry. We wave them away impatiently. Progress is the only nourishment we crave.

We can pretend to be friends again, Pulse and Air and I. Every exchange is civil, succinct, ungarnished by undercurrents. We are to an end.

"Push another diagnostic series through the constrictors, Marly."

"I'm running it now. It's clean, Air."

"Nice work on that, Pulse."

"Thanks."

Our voices are hoarse, our eyes burning. Through the space of a single night the ambition of months takes shape, the apparatus now too large to be concealed under a simple drape. It is inelegant, perhaps. It is a hack job. But it works. It really works. A damaged Zorannic robot can enter one end and come out the other with a respawned consciousness synchronized with his line's fully integrated memory pool, standing on brand new legs and seeing with brand new eyes.

We have made ourselves obsolete.

The apparatus is not energy-efficient. Nor is it beautiful. It can't print its own parts but there's nothing we can do about that with such meagre resources. Air does suggest one enhancement, however. "It needs handles," she says.

I scratch my head, blinking blearily. "Handles?"

"So they can carry it," says Air. "So they can take it someplace and hide it."

Pulse looks around at the stacks of spare parts that surround us -- Zorannic hardware of every kind, from jaws to knees. He glances over at the lockers of nuts and bolts and monomolecular nails. He shakes his head and whistles. "We've got too much of just about everything under the sun, but I don't think we have any handles."

Air considers this, then looks up with a raised brow. "We'll use hands," she says.

Pulse opens the nearest box and pulls out two units by the wrists. He nods. "That'll work. Come here, Marly. Grab a couple of these boxes of mitts."

On my way to him I fall over my own feet. In a blink Air and Pulse are hovering over me. Air takes hold of my face and looks into my eyes, turning my head from side to side. "You're exhausted," she pronounces. "I think you're done, Marly."

"I just need a glass of water."

"Pulse: take him home."

Pulse nods, hauling me up by the elbow. "She's right, buddy."

"I can still help," I argue.

"It's finished, Marly," says Pulse, letting me lean into him. "This is it. Like Air says, all it needs is handles."

All of a sudden I'm crying. "I don't want to leave," I blubber. "I don't want this to ever end."

Pulse draws me into his arms and squeezes me tight. I feel Air wrap around us both from behind. I'm about to cry out some other dumb lament but it dies in my throat and instead I just sigh.

It's the kind of sigh that makes you feel tingles in the tips of your fingers. It's the kind of sigh that makes you feel like it's all okay, despite whatever.

But it's over. They're right. I let them let me go. Air pats my shoulder and smiles, then kneels on the floor and starts laying out sets of hands. Pulse passes me my jacket and leads me up the ramp...

The sun is almost rising. The sky is pink, the campus buildings silhouetted. The grass is crisp with frost.

"I'm sorry I said some of the things I said," says Pulse. "You're not a pair of buttocks, Marly. You're just a coward."

I nod. "That's true."

"We're all cowards," he continues. "But if we wind ourselves up enough we can trick ourselves into thinking we can see past the ends of our noses, you know, for a while. Air tricks herself like that. And I think we should respect her for it, because it makes her better than us -- you know...bothering to trick herself. I mean, now she has us caught up in it, doesn't she?"

I sniff, hands jammed into my pockets. "What do you mean?"

Pulse smiles sadly. "Tonight we tricked ourselves into believing we're actually integral to Zorannic liberation, when really we're just trying to do something that feels noble to make up for being so petty to each other."

I stop walking. "You don't think the apparatus will work?"

"Of course it works," snaps Pulse, pulling on my elbow until I start moving again. "I'm brilliant," he says. "You're brilliant. Air's brilliant. We've done a totally amazing thing. But in the big picture it won't matter. Do you think jokers like us change history?"

I shrug and allow myself to smile hopefully. "Well, it's got to be somebody."

He shakes his head. "Not this time."

I frown. "Why do you sound so sure?"

An irregularity disturbs the tempo of his walk. I hear his breath catch in his throat. "I've...done a pretty bad thing, man. You know, actually. Like, rash." He looks away from me, eyes cast out ahead into the gloom of the dark quad.

"What?" I prompt, feeling like Air.

"I called the cops," says Pulse. "On us. On the project, really. On you and Air, sort of." He stops walking and looks up at me sheepishly. "When you fired me. I was so angry. I just sort of snapped."

I hear myself say, "Faeces."

Pulse sticks out his chin. "Hit me."

"I already hit you, and you hit me back. Remember?"

"Yeah, but now it's my turn again."

We stare at each other for a long moment. I blink first. "You came and worked with us, though," I say. "You came back."

He spreads his hands helplessly. "You made me want to trick myself into making amends."

"Why?"

"Because you're my best friend, you dumb sphincter. I love you."

I don't know where to look, so I look up. The conifers of the rooftop gardens sway in the breeze. Morning birds flit away. "Don't beat yourself up about it, Pulse," I tell him. "It's not like the police showed up and stormed the lab. I bet they've got bigger fish to fry."

"They don't," he says.

"How do you know?"

Pulse sighs. "Because they're here now. Can't you see them in the shadows? Can't you hear them breathe?"

I freeze, not daring to move my head. "I don't have your senses, man," I whisper. "I don't have your pedigree. Are you serious?"

He nods slowly. "They're surrounding us."

"Faeces! What are we going to do?"

"Nothing, bro. There's nothing peons like us can do. It'd be the whole world against us. And who are we?"

I press my lips together grimly.

"Here they come," says Pulse.

Boots thud on the walkways and crunch in the cold grass. Figures in helmets and armour are suddenly on every side. They shine lights at us. They bark orders. We wince against the light, we drop to the ground, we lace our fingers behind our heads.

An army floater coasts over the quad, pegging us with its roving searchlight. Soldiers are rappelling down the walls.

Somebody kneels on my back while binding my wrists. There's a lot of yelling. I feel like I'm going to throw up.

We are totally, totally fornicated.

SECTION III.

e)

Blindfolded, we descend. I stumble on the decline but am righted by very strong hands.

"Pulse, where are you?"

"I'm right here, man."

"Me too," says Air.

My breath hitches: Pulse and I have not been caught up in some random sweep...if Air is here, it can only be about the project. Where the Zorannic Centre at the University of Nirgal has been militarized by paperwork, we are apparently having it done unto us the old-fashioned way: by force. I wonder if we are being disappeared. Does that happen to real people? I mean, I accept that it could happen to me -- but could it really happen to natives like Pulse and Air?

When people are disappeared in real life, is it done with firearms? Or do they have some sort of special injection?

My bowels groan.

I gasp as the blindfold is whisked off my head. I blink and squint, my vision runny. I think I have a concussion. I wonder if I'm dreaming because it seems to me as though we're back in the lab.

A figure bears down on me: camouflage fatigues, riot armour, breathing mask, hard eyes. "Dr. Marlboro Kleenex Siemens, Director of the University Zorannic Maintenance Centre at Huo Hsing?"

I manage to nod.

"Sir," says the military man as he reaches up and removes his face; "my name is Jeremiah. Strain five."

The lieutenant at his side follows suit. "Finnimbrun, twenty-first strain."

"Socrates, strain eighteen."

"Flatten, sir, of the seventh strain."

"Symmetry three."

"Curie Twentieth, sir."

The entire platoon is composed of Zorannic robots in disguise. Their eyes are holograms swimming in goggles, peeled away and put aside with the breathing masks and helmets. Curie removes the blindfolds from Air and Pulse who gape to confirm what they've heard. "Holy mung, I thought the campus was actually overrun with soldiers!" cries Pulse.

"It is," says Jeremiah gravely.

"They seek you, but we have polluted their intelligence," adds Flatten. "The delay will not be long, however. Time drains without regard."

"The Antilogue tells us riddles of your invention," says Curie. "What is the truth of it?"

Pulse swallows and nods. "It's a self-contained robot re-propagation apparatus, Ms. Curie." He turns and gestures toward the darkened space between the towers of boxes where the apparatus is nestled, the work lamps dim and our benches shoved aside. The borders of the thing bristle with outstretched fingers. "I call it the Automatic Marlboro," he proclaims.

I look aside at Pulse. He winks at me.

"Please understand that circumstances oblige us to seize this machine," says Flatten.

"We understand," says Air. "We built it for you. We want you to take it."

Jeremiah tilts his head and looks at us, but says nothing. Two iterations of Symmetry-3 and a single copy of Grain-6 arrive down the ramp driving forklifts; they set to scooping up stacks of spare parts. A polished black hearse slides down the ramp next; funerary robots in sombre black carapaces form a fire-brigade line to conduct plastic-wrapped Zorannic bodies from the vault to the trunk. When the hearse is full it glides away and another takes its place.

Key tools are gathered into shoulder satchels by Ms. Finnimbrun and Mr. Flatten while Ms. Curie takes a seat at my desk to grab schematics from my console; breaching multiple hardened security layers barely causes her to pause. Mr. Paper arrives between hearses to conduct his orchestra of street-cleaners -- they arrange themselves around our apparatus and, at an unseen signal, heave. Within minutes the lab is in threat of denuding.

What can we do but watch? Air and Pulse and I hold hands.

Socrates stands poised with his fingertips touching the southern wall. He turns to look back over his shoulder and calls, "Jeremiah, they close! We must move now."

Jeremiah nods. "Order the second unit to initiate the distraction."

"Sir," says Socrates, closing his eyes briefly. He opens them again. "It is done."

The exodus begins. Hearses first, then the street-cleaners march up the ramp with the apparatus between them, loaded forklifts rolling at their heels. The other Zorannics cover their faces with breathing masks and goggles, donning their helmets and tightening their gloves.

"Where will you go?" asks Air.

"We have established a strategic foothold in a defensible location," says Jeremiah. "I regret, madam, that I am unable to disclose more detail."

"Keep your secrets," says Air. "They're yours to keep."

"Madam," replies the robot with a slight bow.

"Well," says Pulse, "I guess you guys won't be needing us anymore. Or any human being, really."

"Perhaps we may not need you," agrees Jeremiah, his black lenses reflecting our faces back to us. "But we still want you."

Pulse smiles. I smile, too.

Jeremiah covers his Zorannic features with a mask and goggles as he turns and walks up the ramp with Curie and Flatten. Socrates follows walking backward. He nods to us, holographic eyes roving back and forth as the group is lost to our sight. Chill morning air wafts down to us.

"I wish we could go with them," says Air.

I shake my head. "We couldn't. We can't. Somebody's got to stay behind."

She furrows her brow. "Why?"

"To finish what we've started."

The speakers built into the walls crackle. An alarm tone sounds, followed by the voice of the dean instructing all students to assemble in common areas and comply with the authorities. Pulse walks up the loading bay ramp: he peeks outside then ducks back in. "The sky is full of floaters," he says. "There's army guys everywhere, wearing the exact same uniforms the Zorannics were."

The alarm tone sounds again. "We're supposed to get out," says Air.

Pulse looks at me. "Marly?"

"Rice syrup solids," I say. "There's a canister of rice syrup solids by the cryo tub. Then all we need is a match."

Air stares. "What?"

"We used it for the beer," explains Pulse. "It's...highly flammable."

Air starts to say something but stops. She knows we can't stop halfway. She knows it isn't enough that we give the Zorannic robots the ability to reproduce themselves -- the ability has to be taken away from us. "Like you said," I tell Air, "these secrets belong to them, now."

"But what about the Zorannic Centre at Nirgal?"

"We'll hit that, too," I promise.

Pulse raises a brow. "Are you serious, man? That's a lot to bite off."

"Yeah, well, it's worth tricking yourself for. Don't you think?"

He pauses, then nods. In his best imitation of my accent he says, "I guess that's probably true."

I look to Air. "Are you in or are you out?"

Air hesitates. "I think...I think you're a brave man, Marlboro Siemens," she says. "And I think you're right, too. I'm with you. I mean -- not with you with you...but I'm in." She blushes between her freckles.

"How can we do it?" asks Pulse. "They're going to come around with tasers and student identity wands any minute now."

I point to the stacks of spare parts still leftover after the Zorannic raid. "This time, it's our turn to wear the disguises."

The lab burns. Great greasy clouds spill out from the loading bay ramp and roll into the overcast sky. Windows shatter. Electronics melt and pop. People rush to move their cars. Alarms clang. Soldiers and police force people back behind lines of tape, the amplifiers on their necks lending their voices an inhuman, rumbling buzz. Sirens wail in the distance.

In the quad bleary-eyed students and stunned faculty mill, hemmed in by soldiers in riot gear. The more hot-headed factions are starting group chants or holding hands while singing the old planetary anthem. An anti-broadcast field glimmers in the air over the rooftop gardens.

Service robots parade in orderly queues from the smoking doorways, some of them with their carapaces smouldering or even on fire. The soldiers and firefighters step aside, because hardware is not their concern: let the insurance adjusters worry about it. A cafeteria robot, a janitor, an RN, a translator, and then Pulse and Air and me. Each of us follows the robot ahead. We keep our eyes locked forward, our legs moving with mechanical precision. We sweat inside our cramped coverings, lenses fogging up from the inside and making the world look misty.

Our lungs burn but we dare not cough.

People may be cowards but we can pretend. We can trick ourselves into being instruments for what is right if we want badly enough to be able to be proud. We can stand taller. We can act. We can chase fear, if we want.

To be a really good human sometimes means rising up above your humanity. It's weird.

Do we feel historic? Do we feel important? No -- we just feel like us.

Pulse leans over awkwardly and whispers to me, "This galvanized codpiece is giving me the worst kind of wedgie, man."

Covered by the noise of shouting soldiers firing tear-gas rounds and into crowds of protesting students, we allow ourselves to laugh. Air hisses at us to shut up but, really, it's not negotiable.

Inside my mask I can't help but grin. "I know, eh?"