 
### Unnatural

By Anthony DiGiovanni

Copyright 2014 Anthony DiGiovanni

Smashwords Edition

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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### Author's Note

Those who expect science from this story will be subjected to vivisection. Those who expect romance from it will be forcibly sterilized. Those who expect decent language from it will have their original bodies vandalized with profanity.

### PART 1

### CHALLENGE

" _Take a moment to think about your own human body... We take our bodies completely for granted. We consider our bodies to be essential – so essential that... we cannot envision our lives without human bodies. But that is a primitive way of thinking. In the near future you will discard your body – you will literally throw it in the trash – because you will neither want it nor need it. You will discard your biological body gladly, like you would discard an old pair of shoes today. You will be quite grateful to be rid of it."_

– _Marshall Brain_

CHAPTER 1

"God damn you, Isaac Livingston!" Uriah said under his breath. Decadents like that man had no right to the comforts of mechanical bodies. Not in the eyes of the ragged, torn-jacketed individual whose old shoes trod his kitchen tiles, anyway. All this security was so flimsy – Uriah was in, after all – but Livingston probably had paid more for it than would reliably keep ten children safe.

Footsteps in the direction of the basement. _Gotcha._ He drew the electromagnetic gun and opened the cellar door a few slivers. Seeing the glint of a metallic humanoid shape, he flung the door aside and fired.

The ensuing thud immediately preceded the muffled noise of a car crash. He looked towards the cellar window, then back at Livingston. The degenerate was dead silent. Uriah was hardly in the mood to incriminate himself, but what was he going to do? Let the driver go without medical attention because of his cowardice?

He laid the weapon by Livingston's hand and scurried away to the cul-de-sac. The offending vehicle had smashed into the garage door of a house directly across from the street that ran out. Uriah stuffed his gloves into his jacket. Not like he planned to stick around waiting for the ambulance, but fool me twice...

The driver didn't seem to have suffered any concussion, yet she was unconscious and, Uriah confirmed after a few seconds, not breathing. As he groped for a cell phone and dialed 911, he thought, _Damn those richies, they're the only ones who can afford the cars that could be saving lives more worth saving than theirs._

No one picked up.

Uriah looked around. Nobody else seemed to be aware of the accident, except – a body. He could just barely see it, illuminated by the street lamp. He kept dialing while approaching the limp figure, a chill rushing through him with the wind.

Another Organic, he noticed, wearing running shorts and a headband. Poor sap must have had a heart attack. Not that he was freaking Dr. House, but it still struck him as very strange that the runner appeared as if he'd just died in his sleep, like an elderly fellow. Uriah's next dials were quick and strong. He soon found that the cell phone had a feature that could alert a nearby android of an emergency. Figuring a medical bot couldn't suspect him, he sent the alert.

_Idiot!_ CPR first, _then_ get help. But what was the compression-to-breath ratio, again? Cursing himself, he locked his hands together and applied twenty bursts of pressure to the man's sternum. Definitely more presses than breaths, he remembered that much, but what were the ever-loving numbers? And why the hell was the occupant of 544 Stanley Way not giving any assistance whatsoever? Five artificial respirations.

The subtle siren of a hospital robot blared throughout the neighborhood. It was sparse relief for Uriah, however, who by this point was prepared to shoot himself for forgetting to pinch Night Runner's nose closed. Where was an AED when you needed one? He sighed, remembering those three little words. _All for Pat._

The seconds vanished.

It was hopeless. No breathing, no response, no evidence of Night Runner's being anything more vivacious than the mannequin on which Uriah had first practiced CPR. He gave up, rubbing some of the fatigue out of his arms and giving himself some air. Knowing he could not save this guy made it easier to forgive himself for not trying the same method on the crash victim, who was probably beyond revival as well. Residents of Aberdeen, Nevada, were too relatively poor to have artificial doctors close enough to most people who needed them.

Uriah refocused his gaze on the house to the right of Road Rage's. Did these people simply not care? Maybe they knew they were as incompetent as he was. Covering his face with his hand, he departed from Stanley Way with that thud still ringing in his ears. Faint, but as distinct as the original. He was a killer.

* * * *

Uriah woke up worrying what Pat would think of his absence that night. They had basically stuck together up until then, taking as much comfort in their mutual lack of solvency as the human psyche can paradoxically take. Now more than ever, she was likely terrified of not knowing her boyfriend's whereabouts, in this societal web of anti-Organic aggressors. _She may not like it, but it's still all for her._

It was a crisp morning in Aberdeen Park. Birds sang, bugs buzzed, and a squirrel darted around the trees. Yet there was a certain silence in the air, a strange lack of the morning rush and pedestrian activity that gave Uriah reason for perplexity.

He liked it.

A stretch and a yawn, and he was up off Turing Memorial Bench. A mild stroll brought him over to the streets, where he stopped short. Lo, dozens of cars, some lined up neatly as if stopping at a red light, others rammed into each other like dominoes, or into buildings or poles. Some of the vehicles were still on, depleting in limbo a negligible amount of hydrogen fuel. Many had shut off at the command of an intelligent autopilot.

Every single one had at least one dead human inside.

Now, Dennis Uriah was no fool. He knew when he was experiencing reality, thank you very much, and he was hardly prone to hallucinations. And what an ideal reality this was! Gone were the days of parasitic suburbanites' wasting his oxygen with their political and religious drivel, of their ravaging Earth's beauty and life with their crimes, of their absurd social standards and shallow customs, of their splurging valuable resources needed by folks like him and Pat.

Pat! Uriah had to tell her about this, so that they could live the life they had longed for since the end of the golden days. He maneuvered about the traffic down Franklin Parkway, coming to another halt, this one of genuine demoralization, at a silver Nissan.

The woman who had loved him most intimately for the past four years sat still and breathless in the driver's seat.

Contortions of anxiety on her face made it abundantly clear why she was on the road. She must have stolen her parents' car, perhaps on her way to stop Uriah from doing something he would regret.

How long had she been dead, he wondered? No stench of your average death, and her imperfectly perfect skin showed no severe wounds or pallid transformation. She was a statue. Even if he hadn't doubted that a coroner was anywhere nearby, he suspected such a professional's services would be useless here.

It was as if a bomb had silently detonated and drained the life out of all these people's cells. Softened as his heart was after losing Pat, it wouldn't let his eyes rest more than a flicker on the sight of children in those automobiles. Children, for God's sake!

Brought to a standstill as Aberdeen's humans were, the machines persisted as much as the other living beings did. Automated Mag-Lev trains zipped by, and the traffic signals gave Schopenhauer's proverbial lecture to no one.

Uriah heard footsteps coming from the adjacent video store. _Dammit._ He crept nearer and peered in through the transparent door.

"You're gonna kill us all, aren't you, Dimitri?" said a trembling feminine voice. Whose owner was only round as a character, as he found by the glow of the TV from which the voice had emerged.

He retroactively justified the stupidity of pursuing his threat by telling himself he had known there was no threat at all. _Dandy._ With his mind already on the most helpless creatures of Earth, Uriah jogged over to the Finlon Humane Society.

If anything tormented his mind's ear as he ran more than Livingston's death fall, it was the howl of an unforgettable mutt named Andy. Thirteen years ago, twelve-year-old Uriah had made a habit of taking walks around his neighborhood. He had considered the exercise and opportunity to absorb nature worth the risk of harassment. Those not superficially polite enough to merely block their windows, after glaring outside with mistrust, would occasionally holler, "Stay away from our property, you filthy Org!"

Thankfully, such taunts were only a slowly growing prejudice at the time, so the words hardly unnerved him as much as Andy's hostility. One day, during the moving in of Andy's caretaking family, Uriah turned right at the gazebo just as always, when the bark of a light brown entity tearing into the front yard from the back sent him veering into the street.

The dog pursued him across the sidewalk, and by the time he reached the opposite house, it had clamped its jaw around his lower left leg.

" _Andy!"_

Twisting his head around, Uriah could see his attacker rush toward a blond-haired boy of about his age, stomping down the doorsteps. "Whassamatter with you?" he said to the dog at his feet with thinly veiled rage, which elicited a barely audible whimper from the creature. "Just 'cause he's an Org doesn't mean ya oughta snap his fluffin' leg off!"

Uriah winced for more reasons than one as he rose. The boy opened the front door, letting Andy fly in about as quickly as he had chased Uriah, and looked up. "Sorry 'bout that. Haven't got our electric fence up yet, and the little bugger's a bit territorial. Come on in. We were just havin' dinner."

"I don't need your charity. I'm not poor, and if I take one step in there your bastard of a dog's gonna have _me_ for dinner." Uriah faced away from the kid and took a step before he heard him insist:

"No, really, you need that bite taken care of! And Andy's goin' downstairs, ya won't see a hair of him."

He pursed his lips for a moment, then approached the house of the boy who, he saw more clearly now, was wearing a shirt with a small Libertas logo to the right. Uriah resisted rolling his eyes, thinking, _Because your slur didn't advertise enough your sense of supremacy over those of us using the bodies we were born with._

"My name's Perry, by the way," he said as rummaged through his first aid cabinet, which Uriah imagined his family either was embarrassed to have but kept as a courtesy to Organic visitors, or reserved in their kitchen because Perry was the only bigot in the household. "Mom and Dad are out, but I can handle this. Jist take a seat on the couch."

"Thanks. Dennis," Uriah grunted. Then came the howl, a noise of pure longing. "Uh, Perry, I..."

"Oh, that's jist Andy gettin' what he asked for." He chuckled, of all things. "Kinda hilarious when he'll bend over backwards for his kibbles, to tell ya the truth."

Uriah froze before he could lie on the sofa. He felt like he was going to lose his lunch twice over. "I'll – you know what, I'll go care for my own injury, thanks."

Limping his way out, he heard Perry say hoarsely, "You ungrateful Orgs are all the same! Don'tcha know hospitality when ya see it?"

He had not visited that house ever since.

Having at last arrived at the Finlon Humane Society, or FHS, Uriah decided he could no more leave these animals untended after that than a reader of Greek mythology could trust wings made of wax. He might have gone to Andy's rescue if it were not likely the poor thing had already died after all these years.

Observing the building's interior right from entrance gave him the impression that androids provided much of the animal care. Machines easily handled waste disposal, and other devices could distribute the proper food and water portions to the dogs, cats, birds – even some cows, pigs, and chickens, according to a map of the facility.

Some, but not all, of the features of FHS that provided for the animals' proper cognitive development had robotic supervisors. Uriah found a room full of playthings with which a cat could nurture its hunting instincts without biological victims. A particularly fluffy white feline pounced on a mechanical mouse, which scuttled away faster after escaping. An agile yet undesirable dog played catch with a robot called a Homunculus, according to the door.

Evidently canines made better friends to androids than to humans, if Perry was representative.

Still, it became clear to Uriah that these animals needed human patronage, something they couldn't receive from the workers who were in the same apparently comatose state as everyone outside. He looked through each feeding room. Most of them included meal distribution devices – one needed only to place the source of food inside a sanitized trough – but several species had diets too specific to work with this system, and a few had malfunctioning robots. The number of animals and food needed to sustain them was daunting. No way could he haul bags of that stuff by himself, even just from the store shelves to a car.

I need some robot slaves.

* * * *

The idea to loot Aberdeen Township High School struck Uriah with embarrassing obviousness. It was the easiest-accessed, nearest building that employed physical worker robots, at least during this time of year. Benefit auction season at a piteously underfunded public school for lower-class Organics. The convenience of it all pleased him as much as its relation to now-dead kids, who had suffered stratification to which he was no stranger, repulsed him. The animals at FHS should be able to stay fed for a couple hours.

He sauntered over to the academy, finding, a bit to his horror, that it took only under a dozen EMPs to clear the security. It had the appearance of a school whose architects clearly wanted to establish a sleek and dignified facility, but whose primary occupants were too averse to their confinement to give a care about respect for property.

Muffled sounds and the distinctive glow of what seemed to be a video presentation drew Uriah to a door at the end of one hallway. He blocked the sight of the seated, lifeless viewers with his left hand, and the insignia at the top-right corner of the still screen made his blood boil. _Libertas_.

It made no sense. That company's ubiquitous mechanical body, apparently a demo, was standing right next to the presenter, all but calling out to Uriah. He even made a few steps toward it, which rang out faintly through the room in a monopoly on sound. Ascension to a higher standard of living lay within reach of his fingertips, and the presenter doubtless possessed some documents outlining the installation process.

But he drew back, like a child who has discovered too late that the stove is, indeed, hot. Uriah retreated to the door without looking away from the puppet, slamming the door in front of him once he reached the hall. He took a deep breath and moved along, looking for something to distract his mind.

Curious, he followed his memories of high school to the one place in the building where he knew he could invariably find the most honest expressions of teenage thought – the lavatory. Those honest expressions tended to be Freudian in his school days, but he was impressed to find more maturity, if not cynicism, in these young closet autodidacts' graffiti:

Q: What's the difference between a school and a prison? A: I don't know. Ask the nerds when they're finished being beat up by bullies when the so-called responsible adults aren't watching, having their voices stifled by monotony and authority, being fed the bare minimum food quality, getting discriminated against for being gay, black, Latino, or trans, hearing condescension from their "superiors," and being forced to do useless work. Oh, wait, at least prisoners do community service sometimes. Never mind. –Alonzo Y.

Sights like this almost made him glad that society had vanished. Not even fellow Organics could find solidarity anymore. Deciding it would only depress him more to linger on impracticalities, Uriah briskly returned to the hall and stared down at the floor's seemingly infinite pattern of yellow and gray as he continued.

He found a horde of identical work-bots as soon as he entered through the large automatic doors. The silent killer had effectively frozen every simultaneous moment of human activity in time, and this effect was most noticeable here. While a committee of faculty and parents had been standing out of the way, discussing matters left forever ambiguous, the robots had evidently been in the middle of executing some pre-programmed mission.

It was cruelly humorous to see the finished preparations of the event, with the laborers neatly aligned in what one could almost call an army formation. Uriah wondered vaguely if his sister's plan for the Gallagher Corporation building's construction was still becoming a reality at that very moment. Not like she deserved another second in his thoughts, the creep. "You brought this on yourself," had been her last words to him.

Uriah started up one of the androids, a Homunculus that, he found up close, was a product from a company called Metrauto. Fortunately, its emotionless voice told him how to input commands. "Follow me until I say 'stop'," he ordered. He heard the pleasantly soft footsteps of the machine behind him as he ascended the stairs to the gym balcony. "I guess you can see, huh? Stop." Nothing but the sound of his own footfalls greeted him when he progressed towards the closet off to his right.

Sure enough, a dozen more of the bots stood inside. That number, plus the fifteen in the gym, was just six shy of being convenient for his objective. Making some of the androids do a round trip would take too long, for the nearest store with all the materials he needed was at least three hours away for a running Homunculus.

_Fan-freaking-tastic._ He barely dodged an EMP that had come from the ceiling.

* * * *

_Now here is a respectable richie._ Uriah took in his surroundings in the so-called Marshall Manor. Not an extravagant – or any – television, ridiculously pricey wardrobe, or solid gold toilet seat to speak of in this place.

What Marshall Patterson's waste expulsion device did feature was machinery that allowed it to detect evidence of potential tumors simply by testing the urine, presumably for visitors. Perhaps in a few decades mankind would have seen the end of cancer for people of all classes, without Armageddon doing the job, of course. The house's technological amenities had so much promise in them, it saddened Uriah to think they would never have their Utopian children because of his ignorance of engineering.

Uriah found a device built into the living room wall that he recognized as a mechanized pseudo-bookshelf. Booting it up, he scanned the screen's display of literature to find a variety that was particularly heavy in esoteric biographies, do-it-yourself books, neuroscience texts, and transhumanist resources. The computer functioned also as a storage for academic and professional documents, and for Genius-compiled notebooks on tagged articles from the Internet. One could keep the most important information together from a variety of sources – many of which would be recommended by the computer's AI without a single second of manual searching – on, say, a topic related to World War II for a high school student's research thesis.

Intrigued, he pulled out an inconspicuous drawer below the main screen to find it loaded with odd-looking paper labeled "Softsheets" in sans-serif calligraphy on the top. He didn't own one of these machines, but he'd watched enough commercials and heard enough raves by his late acquaintances to know that each Softsheet was actually a device onto which one could upload a book or document.

_I wonder..._ Uriah jumped into the information superhighway.

A search for tips on domestic animal maintenance yielded a few promising documents. _Emergency Veterinary Care for the Layperson_ caught his eye: "Never again be caught inept to take preventative measures that could save your pet's life – endorsed by Oswald I. Sullivan, M.S.!" Five-star reviews and even a free bibliography of the booklet's sources corroborated this claim to credibility, and all for fifteen dollars!

Not that that made a difference now. Money was officially obsolete, at least to anyone capable of hacking a user's password for a virtual credit account. Uriah was hardly tech-savvy, but he resolved to give it his best try. For Finlon's sake. _Where would I store passwords if I were notorious for getting along better with AI than real people?_ Perhaps the answer lay in the question.

Thinking Marshall Patterson would have owned a butler-bot in his lifetime, Uriah stopped inside the sole bedroom. He felt awkward at the sight of a nude woman in the bed who could only be the home owner's lover. Except...

Marshall wasn't there, and just as he realized this the woman woke up.

"You're not Marshall," she said.

_Well, if you want to ignore the twin elephants in the room, okay then._ "Nah, but I am _the_ Uriah, and I have to say I'm glad you're still alive." As she sat up and looked puzzled, Uriah continued, "I mean, I can stand losing the majority of the wastes of space around here, but one human or two is welcome."

"I'm not a human. Did Marshall really make me that convincing?" She – it – smiled.

An anatomically accurate robot had woken up unclothed in a genius's bed and shown little modesty about its situation. Clearly the owner of this house was wealthy but could not buy the heart of a real woman, so he indulged in the company of a synthetic one. He tried not to laugh. "Yeah, that's, that's the word for it."

"So what happened to everyone else?" Its expression sunk into the hints of disillusionment. "Marshall's gone, too. The last thing I remember from before I woke up is that he got out of bed really quickly, swearing to himself, and he must have turned me off here." _What's that like?_ Uriah wanted to ask, but he decided against it. "I'm Jane, by the way."

"Well, uh, I'm not sure how it happened, but I seem to be the last human in the biosphere. I haven't found a single other person around here. No TV or radio programs. Not a single train, plane, whatever. No responses from people out of state I've tried to contact. Hell, no one's tried to ca–" He caught himself. Just how far could he trust Jane?

"Marshall's not picking up. Not his coworkers either. I guess you're right." It stared at nothing in particular before looking down.

Uriah didn't want to sound insensitive, crazy as it seemed to him that he was empathizing with an artificial woman, but the question deserved to be asked. He hesitated. "Jane, did Marshall give you any friends? Bots like you?"

It faced him. "I love Marshall. He's really nice to me, even though everyone else looks at me like a... toy of pleasure. I would do anything for him."

So he'd isolated Jane, tried to establish exclusive loyalty, and it was reinforcing the myth. Those other helpers would have to come from somewhere else, then. Still, Uriah tried not to make his astonishment too obvious, for fear of giving it the impression that he was as cold towards it as anyone else besides Marshall. He took a seat at a comfortable distance from Jane and smiled. "He was a lucky man."

"He said the same. But you shouldn't be here. Just because Marshall is dead, that doesn't mean I'll do the same things for you that I did for him."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Actually, Jane, I want to be your friend."

"Marshall didn't want me to make friends. Friends made him jealous."

He resisted the urge to point out the irrelevance of a dead man's wishes. "They shouldn't. I told you I wouldn't take advantage of your services, so why shouldn't you be my friend? We could use all the alliance we can find in times like these."

It's a rare occasion to observe cognitive dissonance in androids. "I do what Marshall wants me to."

"Jane, I know you love Marshall, but I don't think he'd mind my being your friend if he didn't even know it."

"Marshall knows best."

"Does he?"

Silence reigned. Uriah looked through the window to find a half-dozen cadavers. After some contemplation, he said, "Jane, I have to leave soon, so let me make this brief. There're a few things I need to do in a short time. First, I want to earn your trust. Second, I want to get some food for the animals down at the Finlon Humane Society, where they'll starve if I don't help them. To do that I need someone to, well..." He couldn't finish his request.

"Well, what?"

"What I'm trying to say is, I want your help to keep these animals alive so I can go realize my dream with my conscience at peace. I know it sounds like a bad deal, but as I said, I'd also love to be your companion. A platonic companion. You're probably used to thinking everyone except Marshall sees you as an impersonal machine, but I don't."

Jane shifted its lips in suspicion.

"As a human, I admit I have certain, well, emotional needs. Most flesh-and-blood _Homo sapiens_ don't fulfill those needs, but you're not flesh-and-blood. You're... different. Special. And I like that." He extended his hand out to the robot.

Jane looked at his palm for a moment before standing up. "No. I know people like you, Uriah. Marshall's orders or not, you're in need, and I know you won't just be a friend. If there aren't any other women on Earth, then you'll try to get your fix from me. I will not do work for you, I will not sleep with you, I will not put trust in you, and I will _not_ let you fool me."

The android jabbed a finger dead center at his sternum. "I'm leaving. I am going to find Marshall. I will do whatever I can to bring him back to me, because his protection of me from friends has been for my own good."

_I just got rejected by a sex doll,_ thought Uriah as he watched Jane put on its clothes, which had been left on the floor, and run out of the room with its hand facing him. As if it had something to protect itself. _And it just suddenly got smarter._

CHAPTER 2

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Pat's parents' car became the stolen property of a person on a mission to prevent at least one life from being lost. Uriah decided to move her body to the passenger's seat, not anticipating any odorous decay to occur for at least a day. It gave him an excuse to talk to himself, and he wasn't yet ready to cremate her, even if he knew how.

The Homunculi followed his order to move out of the way any problematic cars left on the road after the event he came to dub the "Housekeeping." To make the long drive somewhat fun, Uriah tried to infer what each dead person he passed had been doing in their last few minutes. Perhaps that old man over there was heading home to make some progress on his memoirs, or that young lady was on her way to her job on the graveyard shift. Maybe that shabby-looking bloke was just finishing a drunken night on the town, on his way to almost drive over and kill that teenage pedestrian.

How many of them had been thinking about death?

About eighty minutes after his departure, Uriah drove into a minuscule town thirty miles south of Las Vegas. Attached to a post of perpendicular logs was a quaint sign depicting the town's name, "Goodsprings," surrounded by piles of mined material.

Passing by the lone general store, a couple of derelict ranches overgrown with desert life, and a post office that looked more like a tourist attraction, he thought, _Ghost town, but couldn't that describe every place now?_ Where humans had abandoned this place until recently, their android servants were carrying out orders just as the school's workers had done, indifferently unaware of recent events.

Uriah saw in the street one human overseer of what another vehicle in the way revealed to be Project Autopia. The same unknown affliction had seized her life, leaving her to be trampled upon by the Autopia bots. Some of these brought construction materials to the Pioneer Saloon, others paved the streets. Uriah drove around this project in the prickly grass and dusty peripheral regions, as the robots didn't seem to mind.

Getting back onto an undisturbed narrow road, Uriah thought, _If only I could talk to these 'droids, they could help me get that password outta Jane. Maybe..._

He looked at his own robots, still pushing away obstacles. "Do not regard these androids as hazardous obstructions, Homunculus," he said to one, pointing at an Autopia bot. "Universal. Confirm?"

"Confirmed, sir. We will not treat the indicated entities with hostility."

"Great. Keep working, guys." Not a formal or even recognizable command, but Uriah was almost beginning to miss small talk. When the one he was talking to didn't judge, at any rate. With that, he entered the saloon.

He wouldn't have known it from the outside, for evidently robots were not shallow, but something very un-saloon-like was taking shape in this place. Tables for gathering remained, received much-needed renovations, even, and the burdens of the machines seemed to prophesy great advances in the facility's entertainment media.

Yet some of the first features to go were the restrooms, liquor, gambling materials, and air conditioning devices, which had been foreign to the original saloon anyway. The gift, food, and souvenir shops were cleared out, but most of the memorabilia and idiosyncrasies of the bar stayed.

By far the most striking change in the Pioneer Saloon was the prominent power hub integrated into its walls. Wires, reaching the optimal balance of thinness and resistance to severing, bound the milling robots to their lifeline. It was more than a set of outlets, though. Five or so androids lugged seven-foot-tall cylindrical chambers inside, perfectly centered. The humanoids hooked up each chamber to the hub wirelessly with a few button presses. Every capsule read "Mindscape" across the bottom in wide, blocky letters.

Uncomfortable with the prospect of asking one of the robots about this, Uriah approached one busy android, saying, "Terminate action."

The automaton didn't alter its behavior, which was understandable, considering any old schmo could bring this project to a halt with two words. Perhaps the supervisor had a manual for bending worker bots to one's will.

Uriah left the building and returned to the incapacitated human manager. Respectable lady, wore a suit with a logo – an _A_ with a robot, arms stretched up to meet at the tips, forming a sort of shadow behind it – on one breast and a pocket on the other. He seized a practical-shaped PDA from the pocket, this one thankfully sans password, and there was an EM gun for the taking in her pants pocket as well. The first note in the log he checked read:

Friday, April 7, 2062 – Memo for Cassandra Eigel

First day of Project Autopia: Current focus to build up narrow framework of town, time for broadening later. Police bots should keep the area idiot-proof; you worry about what the construction 'droids are doing, leave security to security. REMEMBER, recharge any straggling bots working far from hub.

Either Uriah was not, in fact, an idiot, and the security android had seen no harm in his intrusion – or he was, and if he didn't get out of there in thirty seconds, Earth would become the Planet of the Apes, or worse. He was hardly interested enough in what "worse" was to not dart over to the stolen car and _get outta this minefield for the love of almighty Jesus H. Christ._

Moments after he was out of anything one could call a town, no sirens or gunshots greeted his ears. By this time, all the Homunculi were ahead of him, and their footfalls were the only ones he heard. Uriah checked the rear view mirror. _What the –?_

His heart skipped a beat when the explosion came. A flash of light, a brief wave of heat, a gigantic wall of sound – enough to force Uriah to kick the speed up by twenty more miles per hour. He would catch up with the Homunculi in no time.

His mind reached another terrifying dichotomy. Either Cassandra Eigel was too stupid to charge the police bot before the Housekeeping, and thus God knew how many other hazards could be in his way, or someone else had survived last night and had a thing for blowing ghost towns up.

_Don't know, don't care,_ ran his philosophy for the next few dozens of seconds. He got over a small hill on the way and found twenty-four Homunculi, who were slowing down according to their programming, for normally Uriah was supposed to be ahead of them except when they had traffic-clearing duty. Three were definitely behind him, as everything past the herd up to the horizon was devoid of robots. He turned his head.

Nothing humanoid between him and the ruins of Sodom. He was silent, then heaved a bitter sigh. Even if he found a truck, this would be a long shot. It could be worse. They could have been babies instead of animals, and then he'd have to do a hell of a lot more than just feed them.

_But then,_ the Peter Pessimist in him rejoined, _if our pyromaniac has any children, they're probably better off without him, yet still worse without you._

Ignoring both these voices, Uriah led his convoy onward with the greatest respect for Tyler Temerity: _Forget about the kids, you've got a damned_ bomber _on your hands. Also, you're bleeding._

* * * *

Uriah smiled at the sanctuary before him in the afternoon sun: the Bio-Bazaar of Sloan, fulfilling all your post-apocalyptic guilt trip needs. Sloan used to be an unincorporated community, but eventually its convenience as a train stopping point, as well as the technological boom of the early twenty-first century there, became its lifeblood.

He parked lazily now that there was no reason not to, and, not bothering to lock the door, sauntered toward the entrance.

"Sorry, sir, but the Bio-Bazaar is currently closed," said an amiable-looking android who had been hidden by one of the store's pillars.

"Is it?" Uriah said, drawing an EM gun and pulling the trigger.

The robot stayed standing. "Please put down your weapon, sir. It is ineffective here."

"Then why should I put it down?" He held the gun like a Frisbee and tossed it at the bot's most vulnerable spot. The bayonet analogue hardly punctured the android at all.

A projectile fired from the robot's chest and hit Uriah, stunning him from the neck down. "You were warned, sir. Sloan authorities will deal with you shortly." It beeped, having sent a report to SPD, and returned to its starting position.

_That's it? You're gonna make me just lie here in total indignity until the police come?_ So it was, and every faint note of the soft rock playing from inside – for what Uriah could only assume were humans intending to do renovations – every second of that buzz given off by androids that one scarcely notices in normal situations, and every time his mind wandered to the memory of wailing Andy, made him eager for the moment when he would incapacitate that skeleton of amoral metal.

Uriah looked around as much as he could in his state. Maybe if he could manipulate the controls on the device that had rendered him paralyzed, he could free himself. Or he could end up paralyzing his head as well. He had to be discreet. To give commands to the Homunculi was out of the question.

The small sphere of gadgetry lay two whole feet from his head. As he flailed his head every direction and stuck out his tongue, he wondered if the descendants of Luke Skywalker, in a galaxy far, far away, were mocking his lack of telekinesis.

He'd cherish the majority of his muscles from now on, that was certain. At least every futile attempt at propulsion of his body that Uriah made was a drain in the android's reasons to take him seriously, if adherence to pre-programmed heuristics for judging how to act can be called true reason.

A siren crept into Uriah's earshot. _Crunch time._ He thought. Hard.

"Hey, you!" he shouted at the security bot. "Get over here, piggy!"

The android walked toward him. "Please wait for the police, sir. Be aware that any enmity you display will be held against you in your legal record."

"Yeah, yeah. You think I care about that right now? 'Droid, what I'd really appreciate right now is if you could scratch an itch on my forehead, seeing as I can't reach it like this. Understand?"

"I comprehend your request, sir, and I refuse to honor it. Be patient."

Its foot was inches from the sphere, to which Uriah nodded as he spoke, "Fine, then, but ugly, you forgot to pick up your little toy."

Undeterred by his taunts, the automaton reached down. In perhaps the scariest seconds of his recent life, Uriah shrieked, pressed the restorative button of the device that the robot jerked in his direction with its fortunately humanoid nervous system, and gave his enemy the strongest kick in the leg his adrenal glands could muster.

The top-heavy robot tumbled backwards. He snatched up his EM gun and, remembering that it wasn't the right weapon for the job at hand, called, "Homunculus SU-70, that security bot has attacked me. Disable it."

Two android kills in two days, if Livingston was not to be considered a human with his Libertas. This record would have pleased Uriah if the police bot, which would surely be even more advanced than the android a Homunculus had just snapped like a wishbone, were not twenty meters away from him.

His eyes darted towards the door, then to the nearest of his soldiers. "Get inside that building, Homunculus, and use force if necessary. Universal minus three. Confirm?"

They complied, and he heard no evidence of their resorting to breaking glass. Uriah addressed the remaining triad. "Incapacitate that rogue robot, Homunculi. SU-70 to seventy-two." Rogue, cop, it was all the same, as long as it posed a threat to a human.

Uriah glanced at his watch. Quarter after four. That wasted second paid its rent in his multiplied haste. Figuring his gun would fare better aiming away from the store, he gave it a charge and squeezed off a strong pulse twice as fast as he would have otherwise.

The bot matched his speed, however, putting up a shield. The Homunculi fell.

_This is_ not _supposed to happen!_ He was on his own and the android was a yard away. Now or never. He rolled forward and right, saw his opportunity, and shot again – blocked. Were he an Unnatural, he would be dead. Such as it was, however, the police bot shot one of those stunners, which Uriah flung off course with his weapon.

He nailed it right in the silicon heart, but not before it could send an alert. _Well how about that._ Undoubtedly more than one replacement would show up soon enough. Time to be proactive. He entered through the now-unlocked door.

More androids of a different yet competent model – Bio-Bazaar Bots – stood all over the store, awaiting orders of a kind they would never hear. If the mission was to nip the police in the bud, before they could even know they would need reinforcements, these were not ostensibly helpful. Not yet. Uriah programmed seven of them to do as the Homunculi did, and he took another with him into the elevator, holding his nose along the way in response to the odor of dog food and fish tanks.

"Where are your security bots?"

"Third floor, sir, in the back-left corner."

He pressed the corresponding button, and they ascended. Within the next twenty seconds, the door remained shut. _Idiot! Of course those bots would get the other guy's signal, too. Must've locked us in._

"Triple-B, can you open that door?" he said, remaining calm.

"I am afraid I cannot carry out any command that defies store management, sir. Please be patient. Authorities will take you into custody."

Uriah drew his gun and deflected the Triple-B's stunner. He picked it up and kept his gun glued to the android's chest. "One wrong move and you're museum fodder, 'droidy."

"Threatening me will not open the door, sir."

"Oh, I know that. But it will keep you from harming me."

"That is not entirely true, sir. I do not value my life as anything but a means to the ends of the Bio-Bazaar, and as such I could disarm you right before you destroy me."

This caught Uriah off guard a bit, but he shrugged and said, "Sounds like a sorry excuse for a life to me."

"It is what I was made for, sir. I trust my creators' judgment."

The elevator was silent for so long that Uriah broke it by saying, "Shouldn't the security bot have gotten here by now?"

"Even if your servants disabled one, they will not be able to stop all of them, sir."

"Wanna bet?" He glanced at the door, to his right. _It has a point. No sense leaving it active._ He fired.

The lights on the Triple-B stayed on. Inspecting his weapon more closely, Uriah found that it had run out of power.

His heart plummeted even more as the elevator doors opened to show a stunner-sphere flying straight toward his chest. Its owner wasn't as stupid as its predecessors, picking up the projectile and signaling for two Triple-Bs to carry Uriah by the armpits.

"This is robbery of my dignity, don't ya think?" said Uriah in a facade, in spite of his resignation to a situation that he now knew was thoroughly FUBAR. Every Homunculus the escort passed by, descending to the first floor, fell in deactivation to his cold master. The minutes were drying up as much as the water dishes at the FHS.

There was only one option left now: abuse the First Amendment. "Homunculus, block the doorway now! Universal!"

A wall of Homunculi greeted them as the doors opened. Being designed purely for manual labor, these bots had thicker skins with no soft spots. They pulverized the enemy in a frenzy that gave Uriah a whack in the head.

When he was sure the nearby Triple-Bs of all kinds were down, Uriah ordered a Homunculus to free him from his immobilization and stood up, rubbing his head. No wounds any more serious than the kind he had suffered during the bombing, but this was hardly the time to rest easy. _Just the first wave of bots down. Now we make our stand._

* * * *

They headed to the functional elevator. Uriah stopped himself before entering, looking back at a dead Bio-Bazaar worker. Evidently this man was up there in the staff hierarchy, what with his sickeningly high-quality Libertas. He wasn't armed as Eigel had been, but he did have a card key for classified access in the store. Not like it could hurt him, so he pocketed it.

Exiting the elevator, Uriah found a dome constructed entirely of translucent solar panels covering the roof. Power flowed downward through a web of tubes, covering the greenhouse-like room's floor with an intricate shadow. No actual herbs grew here, rather it seemed to be a showcasing room for artificial trees and bird habitats. Uriah navigated this mess of products until he reached the emergency exit.

Outside, he found an excellent vantage point on a scaffolding, which was itself another solar panel. He stood forty feet off the ground, the Homunculi behind him. Sloan Police Department was in view, yet there were no shapes of androids exiting the building. This was unusually slow for law enforcement bots, considering the other android had sent the message at least ten minutes ago.

Uriah figured he should take a miracle when given it. He had just enough time to go find something with sufficient power to stop the flow of robotic reinforcements.

Back inside the dome, he kept his eyes open for anything useful for the job. All the store's wares were just food, prescription medicine for animals, skill-building toys, and everything else completely unhelpful to a man with any number of police robots on his tail. He groaned, returning to the elevator.

Uriah now noticed a button inside, reading "B," that had a thin horizontal slit down the middle. He pressed it – no light. Withdrawing the card key, he took the plunge to the basement.

His Homunculi's footsteps made a more pronounced echo in here, for it was quite a long hallway. Doors to various storage rooms lined its walls, yet unquestionably its most intriguing portal was at its termination. That door's heavy security was noticeable even from the opposite end, and it pulled Uriah in like Jupiter.

Elementally speaking, the door was more like the lower crusts of Earth than any gaseous planet, complete with a thick steel layer and locks that made it an impenetrable beast. The material was characteristic of a bomb shelter, but the reason for making it inconveniently accessed wasn't so clear. Unless the former was exactly what its designer wanted people to think, and Uriah would gladly believe that, considering a facility for nuclear war preparation would likely be loaded with weapons. Weapons that could minimize his chances of meeting an absurd death.

Inaccessible as the room beyond currently was, since his card key was laughable in the presence of such protection, Uriah had at least bought himself some time. Reminding himself of the virtue of objectivity by seeing the Homunculi's indifference to that metallic fuel of curiosity, he began to poke around the other rooms.

A pattern emerged with each door he opened. There were robotic dogs, cats, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, even fish suspended in a liquid harmless to electronics yet very similar to water. These seemed to be testing grounds that posed no threat to actual, sensitive creatures. They "seemed to be" only because no objects with which one would expect an artificial pet to interact were there.

What did litter the desks and floors of these rooms were blueprints of the fakes, notebooks and journals, and anatomical diagrams with special attention given to the central nervous system, one of which the curious student of nature in him couldn't resist taking.

These workspaces had all the fingerprints of a mad scientist, or scientists. The paranoia of a potential anti-nuke room only added to Uriah's unease, but thank heavens for wackos if their insanity provides EM guns for those in desperation. He felt compelled to return to the crazy's refuge.

_What's your secret, Frankenstein?_ He looked at the lock more closely – nothing a paper clip could bypass, yet its protection was something even more vulnerable to the hacking mind. Three blank spaces lay in the center of a small screen. That seemed less pathetic when the virtual keyboard showed thousands of characters, including Chinese and case-sensitive Phoenician letters, and even then the password required a specific font or combination thereof.

Still, there was illegal software out there that could crack this code with a simple trial-and-error heuristic. With twenty-seven billion possibilities and a processing power of a hundred trials per millisecond, divided among a thousand "workers" in the program, the modern technological wizard could beat a system like this one within at most five minutes.

Uriah gave it a few tries. "Dog." "Cat." "Bio." "Mom." "123."

So he wasn't exactly Mark Zuckerberg, but he laughed shortly at the lack of an error-limit time out. If the benevolence of Moore's Law to hackers was such a newsworthy social problem that even Uriah knew it, this guy clearly did not value the secrecy of whatever was in his gigantic safe.

He checked the time. Four forty-two. Where in the name of ironic questions were the authorities? There was no sound of searching humanoids upstairs, and even if they were particularly stealthy buggers, they would have caught Uriah by now. The last robot definitely did send an alert, acknowledged by the Triple-B, so there must have been a malfunction in the SPD bots' transportation. Unless this was all planned.

The bomber was one step ahead of him.

Uriah flew to the elevator. It seemed insane, but it just made too much sense. The MacKenzies, Henry Lynch, his girlfriend Patricia Mallard, and now himself. All targets of systematic anti-Organic violence in the past week.

An image he hadn't taken at all seriously a few minutes ago popped into his mind and made his jaw drop. Some graffito he'd seen on the wall not far from the reinforced door:

GET WITH THE TIMES, FUCKIN ORG

It was a password only an Organic would think to try, for Unnatural observers would pay no mind to such petty vandalism.

As he tried in vain to make the elevator go faster than normal, he remembered all the Unnaturals' slurs and justifications of their sadism. As far as bigots like Isaac Livingston and Mr. Mystery Bomber were concerned, Uriah was an over-screwing, planet-polluting, resource-wasting Organic parasite who was too prone to apathy and too inefficient.

_Never seemed to occur to these people that even if we were lazy drugged-up welfare whores, we're only in this position because of the bodies we would gladly trade for artificial ones if we weren't already poor._ The absence of androids to greet him on the first floor was reassuring. He looked outside to make sure.

No police, but he was out of the frying pan, into the fire. There were only six Homunculi left, and time was running short. For all he knew, Bomber wasn't going to stay north for long – he or she had simply been trying to avoid arrest, maybe even to stall him from feeding non-human "Organic parasites."

The alternate possibility struck Uriah just as the sound of the second blast of the day did.

CHAPTER 3

He had brought a couple Homunculi down with him to soften the blow, but the debris came crashing down upon him all the same. Sharp pains attacked his torso and right leg. _What kinda firecrackers is this madman using?_ At least his infinitely curious mind knew now why the lock was so vulnerable. Regardless of where the bomb had been planted, he would be a sitting duck in that trap.

For all his life, Uriah had scoffed at the melodrama of those who suffered physical pain. Such sensations last for a few fleeting moments and can be soon forgotten, but emotional suffering lasts forever. It has power over people's relationships and their very character with which no bodily scars can be compared. Indeed, death itself seemed not so frightening to him when he thought about it. At least he would never be bored or hurt in a state of nonexistence, whatever that was supposed to mean.

That was then.

This was now, when pain was exacting its revenge upon the man who had insulted it as much as he had all its other victims. Yes, it really was extremely uncomfortable to have your legs fractured and your chest pummeled. It really was downright terrifying to see the prospect of death staring you down when you were a helpless mess. And it really was more important to him then that he was trapped under a six-story building's worth of rubble, than that his conscience would have to deal with the tormented cries of starving dogs and thirsty cats for the rest of his life.

Uriah felt like crying.

He'd never been much of a weeper even at his father's funeral. He knew he would hate himself later for having such egocentric tear ducts, but his immediate concern was, _How do I make it out of this deathtrap alive, dammit?_

When the agony became the norm of his existence, he turned his head. A Homunculus was there, glory be. He shouted in intermittent bursts, "Homunculus, I need you to get into the open air if possible. Universal minus SU-76 and seventy-nine. Confirm?"

"Confirmed, sir," said an android a few feet away from Uriah and the two on top of him, whose following suit would bury him. He heard some shifting and the displacement of construction material, though he couldn't see it. Sounds of futile resistance to a pile of matter simply too compact followed. This pattern recurred in two other directions. Either the remaining robot wasn't functional or Uriah's command was inaudible through a dense wall of department store.

He breathed a quiet sigh. So this was it. Screwed over by a sociopath's brain trapped in a Libertas body, which would have saved his life if folks like this sociopath hadn't replaced him with robots in the first place. _Don't think things like that._

That image of Perry laughing, amid the auditory backdrop of Andy's shrill whines, flashed into the forefront of his mind without warning. All the wasted time and effort, which had landed him here, didn't help matters.

Was there something about the natural human body that made the mind more than the sum of its parts, some "soul" that one had to sell in order to transition to the painless life of an Unnatural? If there was, now Uriah was not so sure he'd refuse to sell it. Maybe a synthetic body couldn't protect a person from the Housekeeping, but one could hardly deny that it made the finite life more livable, after having confronted the humbling potency of profound discomfort.

Perhaps spiritual suicide wasn't, in fact, necessary to be free from the mind-torturing power of the human body itself. Perhaps it was possible to afford respect to sufferers of psychological discontent without denying it to the physically afflicted. Regardless, Uriah would be both for the last of his days, hours, minutes alive if he resigned to his fate there.

"Try harder!" he cried. The robots moved in vain. _Christ._ "Okay, new plan. Homunculus, are you connected to a network of Metrauto androids, beyond the ones from Aberdeen High?"

"Positive, sir."

"Is there a way you could send an SOS to the nearest Homunculus?"

"Certainly, sir. I will send it immediately."

_And now we wait._ For three hours. He prayed the Mystery Bomber hadn't planted any more surprises on the way from Aberdeen to Sloan.

At least, to occupy him, Uriah had the puzzle of how the bomber survived when no other Unnatural did. But then, you might as well ask how he himself had pulled the same Apocalypse Houdini for the Organic race.

* * * *

His stream of consciousness hit a dam at the noise of approaching robotic footsteps. They were different from the Homunculi, though this could be due to the muffling effect of Uriah's potential sepulcher but for the grace of artificial intelligence. A physiological expert he was not, but he supposed that prolonging of treatment of a bone fracture would have its complications beyond extra pain – and he'd had his share of that sensation in the past two hundred minutes, longer than he expected.

Now he heard the repetition of debris removal, almost like shoveling snow. "Whoever you are, I owe you my life," he said weakly. "Not that you'd hold that debt against me, android."

Moments later, his savior moved a Homunculus out of the way and pulled him out. "You were right, Uriah. Not about me being someone you shouldn't return favors to, but about, well, Marshall's death."

Uriah half thought he really was hallucinating as he looked up from his face-down position to see Jane's face. "Jane? The hell are you doing here?"

"That's not a very nice way of saying 'thank you.' Like I said, Uriah, I realized that Marshall's gone, and I wanted to apologize for being sort of stupid back at his house."

"Well yeah, but how didja know where I was?"

"You sent an SOS to another robot, right?" Jane tried to help Uriah up, but he fell as soon as his foot hit the ground. "Oh, I'm sorry! Is your leg broken?"

_Gee, you think?_ "Yeah, yeah, just... let me sit down in a comfortable position for a few minutes."

"Okay, but not for too long. We might have a bad robot on our tails."

Uriah licked his lips, his patience with the thirst wearing thin. "Do we, now?"

"If I'd known you'd be so mean, I would've left you in there." Jane looked off to the side for no apparent reason. Maybe criticizing people wasn't normal for it, as Marshall used to be the alpha and omega of its interactions with humans.

"Why didn't you to begin with? I thought Marshall didn't want you to make friends, dead or alive."

"You're not my friend. But it happened like this. After I found out the truth, I just kind of coped with it by cleaning up Marshall's house and remembering stuff about him when he was alive. Then I went outside because I had nothing else to do. Marshall had told me about Project Autopia in Goodsprings, sorta like a test android city. That's what they wanted it to be, anyway."

Now the saloon made more sense. Nothing necessary for humans there, but there was every manner of entertainment that could reveal how much robots "learn" from their surroundings.

"So I drove there, and soon enough your rescue bot arrived. Only he didn't look like that sort of robot."

Uriah raised an eyebrow, not the least of his reasons for which was Jane's choice of pronoun, but he let it continue.

"He was a different model from that one there. Armed. When I approached him, he was suspicious of me. You probably knew there was an explosion back there, and this 'droid thought I did it. He could probably tell I was more human-like and emotional than most bots, so I can understand why."

"So lemme guess," said Uriah as he wiped sweat off his brow. "Droidy drew its gun when you resisted arrest, and you disabled it?"

"Him, and yeah, that's basically what happened. He'd told me what he was doing, and like I said, this was an apology. I suppose it's what Marshall would've wanted me to do."

"I see." He looked into Jane's eyes and smiled, even though the sunshine was right behind it, blinding as ever. "Looks like I can rely on the kindness of robot strangers, huh?"

"What?"

"It's not important. Just, thanks. What were you saying about robots on our tail? I mean, you got that bot, so what's the problem?"

"I think I know who bombed Goodsprings."

Might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but she was at least observant. "Go on."

"On my way from Goodsprings to Sloan, I met a Transhuman, like Marshall, but alive." She seemed to mean this person was an Unnatural. "He didn't seem all that human, but there was this – I don't know – _purpose_ in him that definitely wasn't a robot's kind."

"Could you describe him? Any hints we can get help."

"I dunno, a little shorter than you, very curly black hair. White. He had this red suit that looked kinda, uh, off on him. And he had sort of a high voice." Minus the suit, that almost... no, that was a rabbit hole of wacky-pills he didn't want to crawl down. "Anyway, he wasn't armed. He just walked up to me, smiled, and said, 'Well hi there! You come from southwest? Aberdeen?'

"I said yes. He asked me if any other humans were alive there, so I shook my head and said, 'There was one guy there a few hours ago, but another robot told me he's in Sloan and he needs help.'

"So he told me, 'That's nice of you. Know his name?'"

Uriah gulped.

"I told him you were Uriah, and he said, 'Well don't let me keep a compassionate young lady waiting.'"

"Honestly, if you hadn't told me this guy was the bomber, I'd say he was a perfect gentleman." _He even pretended he didn't know you were a robot._

"I never said he was the bomber." Again Uriah looked surprised. "He walked in the direction I'd come from, then he said, 'Wait!' I turned around and he was pointing his thumb towards Goodsprings. Asked me if I knew about that bomb that went off back there. 'Yeah,' I said.

"He whistled and said, 'Big one, huh? Might wanna watch out for the bot responsible for it.' I told him I didn't think a robot did it, but he said – well, he said a lot, but it was basically along the lines of, 'Oh yeah, it was an android all right. I saw it running away from the scene of the crime. At the time, I was somewhere in the area you look like you're heading to, not in any town, just the'... uh, you know." _Outskirts. How eloquent you are._ "I asked him what the robot looked like, and he answered, 'Mostly white, 'bout as tall as me, maroon shoulders and feet. Little crippled, I think.'"

If this informant had the build of the average man, which matched what Jane said, he could be describing a Homunculus. _His_ Homunculus, probably disrupted by the bomb. The fellow was either lying or mistaken. "And you believe him?"

"I do. After all, like he said, Metrauto _has_ made their opinion on Project Autopia clear – the description fits your bots there. The company's owner, Yancy Dresden, said it was a waste of money and resources."

"I have Homunculi with me, Jane."

"Like I said, it fits them. Maybe you did it."

"Jane, my leg is broken!"

It crossed its arms. "They could be different bombs, different bombers."

"Because that's really likely." Sarcasm didn't seem to register with her, nodding as she was. He sighed. "Look, I don't have much time to waste. Do you really think I'd bomb a ghost town so as to almost kill myself painfully? Would a Metrauto android do that? The robot he saw was the one I took with me to Sloan so I could supply the FHS, but for apparent reasons, that's not gonna happen. This Unnatural you met is our guy."

"What makes you think that?"

"He's a human without a natural body, so he'd have a load of a lot more motivation to put explosives in places he knew I would be. Unfortunately for him, he saved my life by disabling the Sloan police force." Uriah pointed a finger out to give his realization extra force. "See, I knew something was sketchy then, and now your story makes sense. He didn't want to get caught by any other robots nearby, and how easier to draw suspicion away from himself than bringing up a likely witness? Likely if ya don't know all the facts, that is."

Technically, Uriah didn't know all the facts either, such as how the criminal knew where to bomb him twice in a row. But Jane didn't need to know that. "Didja catch his name?"

"Yeah, that was the last thing he said. Isaac Chivingstone or something."

He gave a spasm of shock that sent a fresh wave of pain throughout his nervous system. Jane squatted closer to him. "I think we should get you to a hospital."

"Couldn't agree more," he said, clenching his teeth, "but the nearest one had better be closer to here than Aberdeen is 'cause we sure as a politician lies are _not_ going back there."

"Why not?"

"Jane, I don't trust Livingston any more than you would a pair of magnets. That bastard raped my girlfriend." _And I thought I killed him, but secrets are meant to be kept._

The robot's face scrunched in empathy as it said, "I'm sorry to hear that. But don't you need to deliver food to the humane society?"

"I already told you, it's too late for that, and you're not helping our war against Father Time by asking stupid questions!" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. "Please, Jane, could you take me to a hospital right now?"

"Okay," it said in a small voice. Uriah was grateful for Jane's display of respect for his dignity, as it went over to the parking lot to give him a ride instead of picking him up like a baby.

"Um, Jane?"

"Yeah?"

"Would it be all right if we went in that Nissan over there? With the young brunette in the passenger's seat?"

She nodded without asking who the woman was, and Uriah told the Homunculi to resume their previous traffic-clearing duty.

The first several minutes of travel were silent. The longer Jane refrained from speaking, the more Uriah wished she had expressed her anger at his insults, rather than taking them in pitiable resignation. Few things struck his guilt nerve more strongly than the sight of a sad woman.

Yes, she really was a woman. If he were blind and she didn't acknowledge her artificiality, he would believe that. An idiotic woman, maybe, but there were human idiots he wouldn't want to see miserable either. He wasn't sure which notion was more terrifying – that he'd become Isaac Livingston for a short time, or that Livingston was worth his sympathy because of that.

At last, Jane spoke as Sloan General Hospital came into view, illuminated by comforting lights left on to spite dead environmentalists. "Why aren't you a Transhuman, Uriah?"

Sometimes the unexpected questions are the most salvific. "I'd sooner take a lobotomy than join the Unnaturals. Robots are fine, you're living proof of that, but the sorts of people who put their brains in Libertas just rub me the wrong way."

"Marshall was one of them."

He may have been a loser, but in Uriah's mind he was harmless. "There's an exception to every rule, of course. From what I saw of his house, he didn't seem like your average Unnatural."

"What's an average, er, 'Unnatural,' like?" She was admiring the soon-to-be-drained light show of downtown Sloan, as much as an android could do so. It was no Vegas, but a charming reminder of the immortal fruits of human ambition nonetheless.

"Okay, 'Transhuman,' whatever. They're vultures. They suck the hopes and dreams out of little guys who just want to make a living without being demoted to sub-android status. If we stick around 'til the Everett Moon Frontier Institute a couple hours away from here, I can show you an Organic example, to prove I'm not biased. That pimple on society's ass put Pat and me in poverty."

"That's where Marshall worked."

So he could expect to go there, but he didn't think it likely to be a pleasant experience.

* * * *

"This man needs a bone fracture repaired, doct–"

There was no doctor. No friendly receptionist bot to greet them, no nurse-droids or mechanical pharmacists milling about, not even a busy janitor robot keeping the lobby and halls respectable. It wasn't quite like a robo-Housekeeping, for the comatose humans hadn't disappeared. This was a phenomenon exponentially more frightening.

"No." Uriah released himself from the Homunculus's support, knowing well that he should anticipate pain and a fall.

"Uriah, you're only hurting yourself." She approached him but he fended her off, clutching his pained body with the other hand.

"Oh hey, robots, you too? Decided to leave me in the pisser? Jesus, everything's slipping away from me and yet I'm not surprised." He said this with serenity that seemed bizarre even to himself soon after, almost with a laugh. The Great Punch-line in the Sky had come to kick him in the ass. _'First world problems'? Screw you._

"I'm not slipping away from you," she said quietly.

And he could only wonder why she wasn't. Uriah sat, doing nothing but stretching and burying his head in his hand for half a minute. Breathing royally, he reached for the Homunculus's hand as Jane said, "So what do we do now?"

"Don't make me say it, Jane."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I only have one option, and it involves going back on what I said just a few minutes ago." He looked away from her. "I have to get an exoskeleton."

"Oh. Well, it _is_ just a different body, right?" She leaned in an attempt to get him to look at her. "You'll still be Uriah. Not like becoming a Transhuman will turn you into someone you hate."

"That's not what I'm worried about," he said rapidly. "It's whether inoculating myself against physical pain will make my mind weaker." He knew that was a lie the moment he said it, but ego is as ego does.

Now it was her turn to be at a loss for words. She turned around and left the building, returning to the old-fashioned car. The other android followed with its burden.

"Are we going to Everett?" asked Uriah.

Jane didn't look at him at first, her hands on the wheel. "Not 'we.' I am, but you need either someone who can put your brain in a Libertas or a doctor. I'm neither, and I think it'd be best if I went to do something for myself right now." She now turned to him, looking somber. "You're still no friend of mine, Uriah. My loyalty is to Marshall, forever." She unlocked the side door. "Take your girlfriend and get some help."

Uriah told a Homunculus to take the body, and as Jane drove off, he realized Pat still smelled like a dream. Crazy as it seemed, there just might be a shade of a hope that he could bring her back, that they could run away together for their dream. In paradise.

Not about to leave himself at the mercy of the man who had abused her, he directed his escort down Sloan Road – _I'll be damned, there is such a thing_ – to the east. Fortunately, Homunculi had excellent night vision.

Not that they needed it. About a mile into their journey, by which point Jane was likely barreling down Interstate 15, Uriah and his Homunculi witnessed an orange light peeking over the horizon, which was the top of a small hilly road. Either dawn was coming very early, or...

Prepared as he'd made himself for the worst, he felt a plummeting sensation somewhere in his chest when he saw over the hill. Straight ahead was a fortress of flames, no fewer than a hundred feet wide. It cast everything else into murky contrast, including the distraught face of Uriah, whose party had turned around as he realized, _He knows. He knows I'm alive, and he's trying to cage me._

CHAPTER 4

The Mag-Lev railroad connecting Sloan to Jean was Uriah's only chance, and his relief upon finding it manned by functional androids knew only the bounds of the availability of tickets. Not only were the nonhuman conductors of the train oblivious to the irrelevance of charging the second-to-last man on Earth for a ride, they also expected payment for robotic passengers. Taking Pat's body on board was out of the question.

"Tickets, sir?"

Deciding it was probably not very smart to repeat the mistake he'd made at the Bio-Bazaar, he checked the price list. The cash he'd snagged on his way, anticipating this problem, was sufficient for six tickets. That unresponsive Homunculus back in the store debris had, indeed, malfunctioned, so less cost.

They boarded the unnervingly spacious vehicle within thirty seconds. If nothing else, automation made society run about ten times faster. Trains' speed hadn't grown at that rate, but this one was fast enough that Uriah could expect to get to Everett before Jane.

Uriah wanted to get some sleep now that he had the opportunity, but his mind was a mess of thoughts more deleterious to this goal than Meg White on the drums. Just how conscious was Jane? Did she perceive the world through robotic "eyes" and "ears" as vividly as most humans do, or even more so? Did she have an internal monologue of thoughts? What did it feel like to her in those hours between initiating sleep mode and ending it? Could she "die" in the sense that humans die? What was it like for a robot to first become conscious, without having to take years to develop a brain capable of comprehending those moments as a human needs to?

He still hadn't figured out what it was about him that repelled the cold grasp of the Housekeeping. Was it really so rare? He thought about the EMFI. The name referred quite literally to the project of establishing a metropolis of human colonists on the moon. The first moon colony had expanded to a population of nearly seven hundred in thirty years. Hardly a societal hub by Earthling standards, but considering the major hurdle of producing a sustainable food source on a giant rock, Project Luna had been considered a success surpassing that of the first man's step on said rock.

The nationalistic morale of the United States that had been boosted by that latter event was bitterly deflated by the growth of Russian Luna, however. The Moon Frontier Institutes across America were simply the country's attempt to get its own slice of the new Space Race pie.

So were the Russian moon residents still alive? There was little reason to think an Earth epidemic would reach the planet's satellite any more easily than other diseases. If he remembered correctly, no Organics traveled to Luna, but then that only raised the question of how any disease could strike the Unnaturals of Earth dead.

No, this wasn't a disease. Diseases take time to kill their afflicted, and they show symptoms. The Housekeeping had occurred like the simultaneous detonation of over six billion explosives from some master fuse. Or the Rapture. If the nuts were right all along, Uriah's chances of being taken up to heaven to be seated at Jesus's right hand were as slim as George Carlin's. Then again, there was a bevy of other sinners not left behind with him.

There was an even more unsettling parallel to Christian miracle tales in his predicament. How in God's name had Isaac Livingston risen from the dead? Uriah had shot him with an EM gun powerful enough to fell any Unnatural within as close a range as he was in. He'd heard the thud. If Livingston hadn't died last night, the thug would have killed his victim's lover much sooner.

Granted, the line between alive and dead had been growing ever more blurry in the past several decades – an advertisement of Manfred Medical School inside the train, listing as one of its incentives a program in artificial organ system research, was evidence of that. Yet even if Livingston could possess some trait of resistance to electromagnetic severing of ties to Libertas life support, that explained neither the identity of the trait nor the lag in his response to attempted murder.

Murder from Livingston's perspective, anyway. Uriah was not a murderer. It was justice. The psycho had to go before he could terrorize anyone else.

He was not a murderer.

Everything outside the train was pitch black by then, and the inside was silent but for the soothing hum and whistle of its ninety-miles-per-hour travel. The Clark Mag-Lev androids were many rooms away on the capacious shuttle.

He drifted into the gentle caress of rest without deriving any answers from his silent inquiry. All synthesis of concepts underwent that most mysterious of degenerations into irrational anarchy that precedes nightly unconsciousness, so much so that Uriah failed to notice the train slowing down sooner than it should have.

* * * *

Uriah woke up with a numb right leg, surrounded by androids of an azure hue at his bedside. The room looked like the inside of a saloon. _Was_ the inside of a saloon. Bit chilly, but the blanket made it bearable. New age music with a superabundance of piano and harp streamed into his ears. It was dawn, based on the light streaming in through the window to his left, which reflected as a near-blinding beam off the central robot's shoulder.

"You're a long way from home, eh, friend?" said that bot, only its voice was like a Transhuman's. A specific Transhuman's.

"That depends. Is this Goodsprings?"

"The very same. Crank the V down a bit, if you'd please, buddy." After the robot turned and nodded to a somewhat smaller one, the music grew fainter.

"I could be farther, then." He propped himself up on his elbows, which wasn't as difficult as he thought it would be, and looked toward the end of the bed. Eyebrows narrowed, he said, "You – didn't –"

"Replace your broken leg with a prosthetic one? You bet!" Uriah took a closer look at the prosthesis, pulling the bed sheets off it. "Good as new, right?" he added, almost shrilly.

"It's, uh, amazing." He wasn't entirely sure he didn't mean that. "And my back?"

"Same. Took a lot of sedatives. Sorry about that – we didn't want to disturb you. Ya looked like you'd had a rough day. Can I call you Dennis?"

He faced the android, seething. "Yeah, well, I would've preferred it if you'd asked my permission before removing a decent chunk of my body."

"Don't you like the improved one, though?"

"To an extent, but I've never quite been fond of becoming an Unnatural. Especially when forced to do so by a rapist from the social class that decapitated my dreams."

The same robot mumbled something, or channeled the sound of Livingston's mumbling, then said, "Ah, right, that's your term for Transhumans. Not like I'd tend to agree with you on that score, but you already knew that, huh?"

"There are a lot of questions I could ask right now," Uriah said in a suddenly raised voice, "but let's start with why you won't talk to me in person, Livingston."

"Well, pardon my rudeness, Mr. Uriah – I prefer to go by Zach, by the way – but much as I value this conversation, I've got concurrent business to attend to. I'm only speaking through this fella 'cause he's my favorite. The other ones can get work done, but Big Blue here has attitude, y'know?"

"Fair enough. Why haven't ya made Big Blue kill me already?"

"Kill you!" The bot made a chuckling motion to match Livingston's audio input. "What would give you that idea?"

"Don't insult my intelligence, Livingston." He tried to get out, but one of the other robots grasped his arm and threw him back with surprising ease.

"Zach, and –"

"I heard the cover story you fed Jane, that sex-bot you met earlier. 'Metrauto doesn't support Project Autopia?' I would say I've heard lazier alibis, but I'm not a liar like you."

Silence. Then, "You really don't know, do ya? But I guess I can't blame you. You're only just entering this uncertain world."

"I wasn't born yesterday, Livingston. Literally. My older brother played this game all the time when I was a kid."

"Please let me explain, Mr. Uriah. I didn't mean you were entering the universe recently, I meant _this world_. You can't tell me nothing drastic has changed about Earth in the past few years."

"Don'tcha mean days?"

"I mean what I say."

"So you think that whatever killed everyone except us was something that 'grew' over years?"

"Who said anything about something killing everyone else?" he said with another innocent laugh. "You're more far gone than I thought. Far into the depths of virtual reality, that is."

"Bullshit. For another hundred years at least, reality is reality. And that's only assuming the moon colonists survived."

"No argument there. What's reality but the sum of all our physical experiences, perceived through an unfortunately subjective consciousness?"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you really did see all those dead people, including me. Your physical experiences were as convincing as experiences can get, so as far as that definition of reality goes, your world in which everyone but us has died _is_ real. Think of time travel. If you go back to the past through a wormhole, the time you go to is as real to you, as the present is to the people ya left behind."

_Okay, I'll play along._ He looked around, taking in the complete integrity of the place, just as he remembered it from over twelve hours ago, before saying, "So you're saying I'm not crazy."

"As crazy as a zealot. The potential to be one is in all of us – it's evolutionarily good for us, even – but when a few resist their genes, _they_ become the delusional ones. So you could be saner than I am, but considering you have to believe that I resurrected myself for your story to make sense, I like my chances." He laughed heartily. "You'd also have to believe that a bomb intended to kill you managed to put not a single dent in this rickety ol' saloon."

Uriah remained silent.

"Speaking of which," Livingston continued as his robotic oracle grabbed a disc-shaped device from a nearby table, "whatcha say to a drink? Can't give ya the 'real' thing, if you insist on that distinction, but I could hook y'up to one of these." A robot nodded towards a Mindscape.

"Just what is that monstrosity?"

"If they can get ya to believe you survived the apocalypse, one of these babies can make ya feel as if you're wetting your whistle like it's New Year's Eve." He didn't stop talking when his guest sat there agape with confusion. "The best part is, you can get stone-cold hammered without doing anything you'd regret if it had consequences in this world. No hangovers, either!"

"Keep heaping more bullshit onto that pile, man. Also, I'm an Organic. I can drink real liquor."

"Not anymore. Why stop at the leg, when the rest of your body is killing you from the inside?"

"You sonofa–!" He sat up and removed the sheets completely, partly to put himself in a position to strangle the androids and partly to see himself. He was only wearing boxers, and the body apart from the right leg looked normal. Not that he could tell the difference between his fake leg and a real one. "I don't believe you."

"If I didn't, could I do this?"

Uriah seized up before falling backwards into a sleeping position. "You cunning protoplasm," he said through clenched teeth. "Couldn't stop at my bones, could you? Had to put your little machines in my spinal nerves, too?" This didn't prove he had anything else artificial, but why wouldn't Livingston have made the whole switch?

"Good guess."

"Is this how you managed to stick your filthy Unnatural whatever-you-have-down-there inside Pat? 'Cause I know her, and I'd bet my own whatever-I-have-down-there-now that she could kick your ass otherwise before you even opened your fly."

"That must be something else from your virtual world," he said with concern that sounded more sincere than Uriah knew it could be. "Trust me when I say she's as much a virgin as you are."

"What, was I wearing a chastity belt on that train?"

"You sure do sound like a Christian, the way you hate Libertas so much."

"I hate Libertas because people like you used them to put me and Pat out on the streets, now if you'll kindly grant me some autonomy, I'd like to leave." Uriah rose, but the machines sent him right back down.

"I can't have that if you still aren't convinced, now can I? You'd report me to the police for a crime I didn't commit, and that wouldn't exactly do wonders for my reputation."

"Oh, well, isn't that convenient? The one sight that would convince me I was wrong, like dozens of other humans walking around as if the Housekeeping never happened, you won't let me see."

Big Blue thrust the disc closer to Uriah. "I've got all the proof ya need right here. Have a good time, that's all I ask."

_Proof that's gonna kill me, sure. But what choice do I have? He's already done the worst thing to me possible by robbing my freedom._ "All right, get it over with. If this does kill me and Pat's also still alive, make sure she at least consents next time." The head robot attached the disc, and it slew his consciousness like anesthesia.

He was sitting at one of the Pioneer Saloon's tables, and his best friends from before the Housekeeping were cheering him on. They were all only mildly drunk, apparently waiting for Uriah to be the first one to become plastered from the monstrous mugful of alcohol before him.

Before granting their wishes, he lit an incredibly flavorful cigarette and blew smoke into the mug – the reason for which he knew about as much as why, in one of his dreams, he had declared that the sea was colored ferret. Their egging him on grew more enthusiastic when he did this, and Dean, a bald guy with an elaborate-patterned tattoo on his scalp shouted, "Come on, ya got five grand ridin' on this baby! Chug like yer about to sing Madonna songs in drag and ya don't wanna remember a lick of it, 'cause that's what yer doing if ya wuss out!"

Chug he did, amidst chants of approval that made him feel as big as Elvis Presley in their eyes. It tasted heavenly, probably due to the smoke. His windpipe did not exist, nor his bladder, nor any finite stomach space. Just he and his beer, and the admiration of everyone he respected, even normally straight-edge Pat, who looked about ready to explode from pent-up desire.

Uriah let the mug hit the table, staring back at her. He stood, approaching the person he finally had back. And yet, she laughed so drunkenly, it felt ugly. Not wrong, just ugly.

She was telling him that she loved him.

He seized the mug and permitted himself to throw it at her head. The gore made him want to vomit – along with some other causes, doubtless – but he had to snatch the projectile back up and, closing his eyes as he shook head to toe, whack it through the air like a sword.

They were too caught off guard to defend themselves. Yells and the cracks of glass-skin contact encompassed Uriah for about a minute until they could protest no more. He opened his eyes, telling himself it wasn't real as he saw blood everywhere.

All the same, it was murder. Murder to rid himself of everything in this place that could possibly keep him in it.

Like clockwork, the anesthesia wore off.

Jane was loosing electromagnetic shots into the room viciously. The robots shut down, casting Isaac Livingston into silence. Uriah was relieved to find she had fired at the Mindscape itself rather than the device affixed to him – he'd be dead otherwise, or at least disassociated from his nerves.

Then, as he unwillingly reached for a robotic cadaver with which to shield himself, Jane attacked him over the shoulder.

CHAPTER 5

"I'm sorry, Uriah," said Jane as she typed orders into the car's autopilot to go to Aberdeen. "I had to do it, or else he would've made you kill yourself. And me."

"What exactly happened back there?" Uriah rubbed his neck. Stitches – he hadn't had _those_ in a long time.

"I'd reached Goodsprings not long before you woke up. I guess Livingston knew where I was, too, because he put a fire behind me and along I-15. Got around it, but that slowed me down a bunch."

"Why'd you come?"

"To see if any of that Autopia stuff was left over." Jane looked away. "I guess I figured, you know, if I couldn't find Marshall, then the next-best thing is a simulation of him."

_Like how Marshall figured the next-best thing to a real woman was you?_ He buried the thought as soon as it surfaced. "Wait a minute. How'd ya know the Mindscape was a simulator before you saw what Livingston did?"

"He... he told me. Back when I first met him."

"And you didn't think to tell me this?"

"But Livingston said those things were dangerous if used by someone without proper setup. I didn't want you to go hurting yourself, because you seemed so desperate."

Uriah smirked. "Like you?"

"That's different." Now she faced him. "You could at least have _something_ else to live for, but Marshall's everything to me."

He focused visually on the surroundings they drove by, mostly just desert. Being indebted to people always made things more awkward than they needed to be. "I owe you, Jane. It almost feels like you're serving me just like a non-emotional robot."

"Give yourself some credit," she said as the sun peeked out from behind a vast cloud. "You stalled Livingston enough for me to send an alert to a medical bot, for one thing. When your life's on the line, a couple minutes can change a lot. Plus, you were right about that guy. If I were in your situation, I'd probably be dead."

_Well, aren't I just the next MacGyver!_ He rolled his eyes at Jane's attempt to boost his ego. _Where's my medal for killing my virtual friends?_ "So did you overhear our conversation? That how you knew what Livingston was doing?"

"Pretty much. I would've stopped things sooner, but I only became really suspicious when he made you his slave."

Uriah's eyes followed a cloud that looked vaguely like a bird, trying to distract himself from the torment. "Forgive me for this, Jane, but did Marshall ever do something like that to you? Did he ever decide your free will was more trouble than it was worth?"

"I only did what was demanded by my programming. If I do that now, how can you say I've ever really had 'free will'?"

The last thing he wanted now was an open philosophical can of worms, but he asked, "Then why did you save me, twice?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Marshall made me that way."

"You said he didn't want you to make friends."

"Right."

"Dunno about you, but I wouldn't save anyone else's skin if the only thing I cared about was pleasing one person." He was telling the truth, because he'd been in such a position. Uriah knew he would slay ten thousand Isaac Livingstons for Pat, and was he so different from that man in Jane's eyes? Maybe he could say he earned Jane's salvation, in a sense. Maybe she saved him for the same reason any human saves another person – she found him worth saving, because he was the only person who looked at her like a person.

All of which was speculation, for she had no answer.

Uriah looked out the back window. He was aware that he couldn't see Pat's body, abandoned outside the Mag-Lev station, from here. He'd decided it was pointless to hold onto the delusion that he could revive her. Still, immense was his sorrow for her, whose last thoughts about her boyfriend were likely something along the lines of, _Oh God, he's gonna do it. He really is gonna kill him in cold blood. I don't want anyone to die for me!_

What was scarier still was that, for a second, he'd believed she was alive after all. He had believed every other lie that went along with Livingston's story of virtual reality and a world without the Housekeeping. It was a world he wanted back, if only for her. But he could never have it.

"Jane, have you ever wanted to do something for your own heart's sake? Ever had a dream?"

_Stupid question,_ read her face. "Never. Everything I've done, I've done for Marshall. Isn't that what love is about?"

"Maybe it is. There's such a thing as too much love, though." He looked at her with more sincerity than he had probably shown to most humans. "Did you let your love stop you from acting like a friend to someone besides Marshall? As in me?"

Jane fired him a scowl as she folded her arms. "Look, I don't know why I'm doing this, but if you think it's for any reason other than that I think it's what Marshall would have me do, you're just wrong. It's the same as with humans. You are what you are because evolution favored your genes, even if you might not know the Darwinian explanation for every gene you have."

Seeing Uriah's expression, she added, "Don't look so impressed. Marshall was a naturalist, so he's told me about the sorts of questions creationists bother him with. He can put it better than me, though." She cast her gaze down, evidently ashamed of saying something insightful. Uriah winced.

"So what's your dream, Uriah?" she said when he didn't speak. "You can't help the animals now, and the woman you loved more than anyone else is dead."

He thought about this. It was a harder question than it sounded. Dance on the grave of every sick tool he'd hated days ago? Get a good night's sleep for once and wake up to a rich man's breakfast? Indulge his fantasies with Jane? Like he could bring himself to that low.

"Well, back before the worker robots put me out of a job, I didn't exactly have high expectations for myself. Life was still pretty difficult, and I just sort of lived through the characters in books I read as a kid. As a young adult, even. But even though I knew I could never have it, there was a life I dreamed of for so many years." He scratched his neck while inspecting the dashboard with extreme interest. "Promise ya won't laugh when you hear it?"

"Unless it's actually funny instead of just silly, I think you can trust me there."

"The life I wanted was an endless one." He looked off into the arid distance. "I wanted to find out how to live forever."

She didn't laugh. "That's understandable. I was expecting something a lot more out there."

Actually, there were many things Uriah wanted to do as an immortal person, not all of which he'd be comfortable sharing with Jane. He was baffled by most other people's willingness to resign themselves to such a short existence with which to pursue their deepest desires. Even a Libertas could stretch a human lifespan only so far, as physical aging was a thing of the past for them, but not mental deterioration. It was borderline suicidal. "You don't find that, I dunno, far-fetched?"

"I could live forever, in theory."

Not that that would be heaven for her without Marshall, but she probably didn't want to return to that talking point.

"Uriah, there's something else I should tell you about what happened back at Goodsprings. Something Livingston said before you could hear him." She said this in that dead-serious voice that says, _I want to get out of a hundred-foot proximity to you because you're gonna want to bludgeon someone severely when you hear this._ "He said you were the one who killed all those people."

"What in the name of all that is unholy are you talking about?"

"I'm just telling you what I heard! He called you 'our little genocidal fella who shot more than he thought.'"

"He's batshit in the membrane." Was he? Uriah thought back to the night he'd shot Livingston. All the strange deaths had started as soon as he'd fired, but how could an electromagnetic gun cause every other human to drop dead?

"I don't know how sane he might be, but I wonder why he was so calm back there. He has to have loved _someone_ he lost that night."

"Let's just get to Aberdeen ASAP. Mass murderer or not, I'm on the hit list of a guy who can control whatever robot he wants." He turned to Jane again. "Just be thankful he hasn't decided to do the same to you, which I guess I should be curious about, but that's very low on my priorities." He could say the same about why Livingston gave him a synthetic leg, as well as a taste of would-be boozer's paradise in a machine from an impeccably repaired saloon.

They reached 542 Stanley Way by quarter to nine. Nearby, Night Runner and Road Rage were still dead. Still eerily resistant to putrefaction, as well, but Uriah was too preoccupied with what he expected to see in Livingston's basement to give this anomaly much attention. What _did_ he expect to behold? It was impossible for him to imagine what a bio-bomb of the sort necessary to cause the Housekeeping would look like. Abstract evidence of his guilt was the only thing he could anticipate.

There was nothing about the house that reeked of dark secrets. No creaks greeted Uriah and Jane as they broke in, no convenient lack of a light switch at the top of the stairs to the cellar. Once illuminated, the stairway revealed a cruel anticlimax. The bio-bomb was presumably, if one were to judge by an EM gun's ability to affect only what was in its line of fire, a decent yet unassuming washing machine. Livingston's corpse and the offending gun were gone.

"Told ya he was out of his mind, Jane. There's my alibi." As soon as he said this, Uriah doubted it, for something at the foot of the stairs caught his eye. Jane followed him down. The object was an EM reflector of the same sort as the police bot's, only this one was positioned at such an angle that pulses would bounce off it almost perpendicularly.

They inspected the rest of the basement to the right, following an imaginary line to a hemispherical device on the floor. A reflected blast would have landed right inside a small hole on the machine. Peering inside, Uriah saw only a centimeter of depth to the hole, although it led to a thin tunnel on the left.

It was hardly conclusive proof, but the ease with which some stray pulses of his shot could have reached the inside of this unfamiliar device worried him. Anything could be inside Pandora's half-sphere, and Uriah was too terrified of throwing away his chance at immortality to give into curiosity. That had almost killed him at the Bio-Bazaar.

"So what'll you do now?" asked Jane. "I can't imagine a good starting point of a search for immortality."

"I know." He turned away from the basement and didn't look back. "I never really planned to break the system I was in, just to work with it in a way that hardly felt like there was a system at all. She made that possible then, so maybe she can now."

Uriah heard a police siren.

* * * *

He flew to the window. Yep, it was a legitimate police car. Jane and he were outside the front door within thirty seconds, unarmed as far as Uriah knew. The vehicle pulled up by the front lawn, and Uriah tried convincing himself he had no reason to fear. A mechanical voice from the car said, "Sir and miss, please step inside the car with your hands up."

"Not in this lifetime," said Jane, who raised her arm.

"Jane, _no_." Uriah knew all too well what sort of reflectors an automated police car would possess. He pushed her arm down. "Let's not make them think we're hostile unless we need to. You'd kill yourself if you tried, anyway."

The back seat doors opened, and the two complied. Not taking any chances, the android walled off its passengers from the front seats with a material that resisted electromagnetic guns.

Uriah had done a little research on robotic cars, finding that this system worked because the car's innards were designed such that only the small front apparatus was vulnerable to magnetism's ill effects. All the energy flowing through the electrical system of the automobile was converted in some way to energy usable by a mechanical system in the back parts of the car, just like an old gasoline-fueled model.

Not as if it were easy to smuggle an EM gun inside one of these machines anyway, with a mobile guard-bot stowed away. This android seemed not to suspect Jane, which was understandable considering how willing everyone was to believe that Asimov's laws had authority over real robots.

The car began driving south out of the neighborhood. "What do you want with us?" said Uriah calmly.

"Governess Anya Zolnerowich and her advisers, of the federal subject of Luna, would like a word with you. You are not in any legal jeopardy."

Up until this point, Uriah had rationally been aware of the existence of the moon colonists, not of all of which were actually Russian by birth due to the fortunate lack of territoriality on the Russian space program's part. But he'd acted as if those colonists weren't really there, for their effect on his life was about as significant as that of the Azerbaijan.

Probably a thorn in the side of the needy, but them's the breaks in a world that needs a shot of nationalism to get its morale high enough to care about the wider world in the first place. Or so the investors in Project Luna viewed matters.

Now that he was reminded of Luna's presence in a way that looking at the Moon Frontier Institute couldn't do, especially after being left the only human on Earth, it felt queer, bittersweet. _Okay, so there are other beings of my species out there, but despite robo-car's words they probably want my ass on a platinum platter. Am I a psychopath for wishing they didn't exist?_

Uriah thought it best to just keep his yapper shut. The Aberdeen Police Department had no proof of his guilt, after all, and at least this one investigation could distract them from his other offense. Plus, Jane could vouch for him. She gave him a look that seemed to confirm this.

By ten to midnight, the vehicle arrived at the building of "concentrated justice," as Uriah had sarcastically called it back in the bad old days. Truthfully, the implementing of robots in the police force had made the system more efficient, but an efficient drug can still be abused.

A door opened with perfect timing to allow the car's entry into a parking garage, monitored subtly but certainly by robots of a different model. Assuming Uriah was new to this station, Jane explained, "The security devices here keep down violence in the dark, plus they make sure each unit of androids doesn't have too much power or info. Each machine only recognizes human voices, and any plugs that the bots could use to share info silently are specialized to prevent that. Marshall said that all of this prevents conspiracy."

In theory.

When the robot was parked, it spoke up. "Any dangerous devices in your possession will be promptly confiscated by the guard inside this vehicle, which will escort you to the conference room. Thank you for your cooperation." Good ol' robo-cops, always with the formalities.

As the doors opened, a dexterous android dislodged itself from inside the auto and, sensing no hostile objects on Uriah's person, led his way down the hall to the right with Jane following.

The conference room was nothing fancy, but it seemed to serve its purpose. The most energy-conservative lighting available gave the room a welcoming air, reflecting off the shiny semicircular table, which was outlined by a dozen or so seats. Devices that looked like thin microphones lay in front of each seat. A high-definition television screen dominated the rear wall, and the rest of the room consisted of a spacious, royal blue carpeted area dotted with desks for secretaries.

Overall, it was surprisingly bare for a room in an advanced police station, but Uriah was too thankful that he wasn't being arrested yet to be too critical.

"Please take your seats," said the guard as it left. "The governess will be with you shortly."

"Shortly" meant "shortly." The screen turned on just as the door closed. It showed a table much like the APD's in a conference room much like the APD's, with the expected Russian stylistic touch.

At the center sat a Slavic woman with a perfect body. Its perfection stemmed from its artificial nature, for health reasons mandated basically every resident of Luna to inhabit a synthetic body. Her black hair was a tad short, she was dressed formally enough to shame Uriah in his casual wear, and her countenance gave an impression of professionalism without appearing stern and cold.

If anything, the subordinates on either side of her were the off-putting ones. Based on the glances that many of them were stealing at the screens near them on the table, Uriah suspected their unpleasant demeanors were bred of the sheer stress of their jobs as advisers to the last governess alive.

Zolnerowich began, in flawless English, "Normally I would say 'good morning' to begin any conference in which I participate, but given the circumstances I think we can all agree that this day is not good by any definition of the word. That said, let us proceed straight to business.

"Two days ago, residents of Luna observed numerous signs of the absence of human Earth-dwellers. All communications between humans on Earth and those in Luna stopped abruptly. Many suspected a minor failure of the comm devices themselves, but the intact messages across space from androids cast make this hypothesis rather dubious. Those androids soon reported the deaths of every human with whom they normally came into contact. Considering the ubiquity of such machines, panic spread rapidly about a veritable apocalypse."

Looking briefly around the table, Zolnerowich seemed to note the winces on the faces of her colleagues at that last word. "Yes, yes, it sounds patently absurd to all of us. There has so far been no evidence of any plausible or predictable cause of the extermination. A nuclear holocaust or a form of mass biological warfare would surely not have gone unnoticed by us, even setting aside the presence of the robots and their reports of the peculiar nigh-catatonic state of all of the deceased."

"I can confirm that," said Uriah. "None of the corpses showed normal signs of decay. Everyone just seemed to have dropped dead."

The officials beside Zolnerowich all leered at him, but the governess herself was barely perturbed. She nodded and said, "Yes, thank you for your testimony, Mr. Uriah. We will give you the opportunity to explain the situation firsthand in due time.

"Anyway, the authorities of Luna have taken action to keep order in these times of turmoil, which I hardly need to tell you is a Herculean task when no one knows what killed the Earthling humans; when virtually every citizen of this colony had been in some way concerned for the well-being of an Earthling human; and when our not quite fully independent society is heavily reliant on the support of Earthling communities."

The gravity on her face was apparent now more than ever, and it carried into her speech. "Implicit in the mission of maintaining order is the satisfaction of the public's thirst for justice, and, if I may be frank, Mr. Uriah, they see the blood on your hands."

"There is none. I'm as ignorant of the cause of everyone else's deaths as you are, Governess."

"Be that as it may, most people view you as a prime suspect, sole survivor that you are."

Uriah folded his hands and psyched himself to keep a level head. "Why would I make myself look so obviously guilty if I were? Not to mention that whatever caused the extermination was clearly so remote from its victims that any citizen of Luna could just as easily be the perp."

"I never said I believed you were guilty."

"Nor did I."

A man not far from Zolnerowich at the table, who either wasn't able to buy beauty like Zolnerowich's or didn't want to, spoke up. "If I may interject, Governess, I would like to remind Mr. Uriah that his failure to report to us until now, and against his will, at that, seems suspicious to me."

"And if I may reply in kind, Mr., er –"

" _Senator_ Mikhailov, thank you."

"Yes, well, I don't hold responsibility for contacting a perfectly functional community that should, if anything, be concerned for _my_ well-being as the only human on a planet brimming with potentially hostile androids. Not you, of course," he added, nodding to Jane.

"I tend to agree on the latter point," said the governess, "but the senator is correct, Mr. Uriah, that contacting you was essential for the sake of Luna. As does any city, we import goods and export waste products from and to other civilizations, and within a handful of days we may be on the verge of annihilation ourselves. Water, for instance, is a highly limited resource here that we can only provide with the help of Earth societies."

"Fair enough, but our silent killer didn't bother to spare a human who could manage the landing of a command module back down here."

"Maybe not a human, but as you said, Earth is crawling with androids. Including your companion."

"Jane is my name, Governess."

"Pleasure to meet you," she said, though not as if she meant it. "Are you capable of operating space travel docking equipment?"

"Afraid not, but surely you know that I probably won't be necessary for this job anyway." Space exploration agencies certainly could benefit from having error-proof machines do their dirty work for them, hence she would only be superfluous, if not a liability.

"My primary concerns are normally political, android."

"I'd like to be addressed as a woman, thank you."

"And I as a government official of the Federal Subject of Luna. This is all tangential," she said with haste. "The reason this conversation is crucial to the fate of Luna is not that we need you, Mr. Uriah, to make our landing a success. We need you because you have an organic body."

"Pardon me?"

"As you know, Luna has only been inhabited by people who have replaced the bodies nature gave them with macro-prosthetics. That is, except for one woman. Have you heard of Sabrina Lockhart?"

"No."

"She was all over the news thirteen years ago."

"I don't watch television, and to be quite honest, Governess, your, er, 'federal subject' has hardly been much of a concern of mine. I was homeless until just two days ago, courtesy of Gustav Stark, CEO of the Everett Moon Frontier Institute." He virtually spat these last few words.

Zolnerowich bit her lip, then proceeded as normal. "Sabrina Lockhart's dream as a young girl was to go to the moon. Her father fervently supported Project Luna and did all that he could to increase his daughter's chances of being one of the first few thousand people to colonize the moon. The RFSA would have been glad to let her make her voyage, but there was one setback. Miss Lockhart was a Christian."

"What difference does that make?"

"Take a wild guess," she said with a slight tone of scorn.

It didn't take long for Uriah to make the connection. "She probably wasn't too fond of the idea of disposing of her Temple of the Holy Spirit."

"Exactly. Personally, I see nothing more offensive to Christian virtues in that notion than in that of performing surgery to extend a person's lifespan, but this is religion we are talking about. When Sabrina found out that moon colonial priority was being given to 'Unnaturals,' as she called them, she was outraged.

"Faster than you could say 'right to religious freedom,' she campaigned against this absolutely outrageous display of militant secularism." The facetiousness in her voice was deafening. "And she won. To this day, she is endangering her health in the name of Jesus Christ."

"Why do I not like where this is going?"

Ignoring Uriah's words, Zolnerowich said, "Well, in light of recent events, the human race is in a pivotal position. To be blunt, we Transhumans cannot reproduce."

"I fail to see where I come into this."

"Lockhart's religion does not look too kindly on artificial insemination or _in vitro_ fertilization."

_All right, time to stop playing the prude._ "Are you telling me, Governess Zolnerowich, that if I refuse to have children with Sabrina Lockhart, then the human species will die out?"

"Yes," said Zolnerowich, relieved and more surprised than she should have been at Uriah's deduction. "There is a common misconception that Libertas make people immortal, but they are simply not advanced enough to completely stop the declining of brain function. Given how small a community Luna is, I can be certain no engineers and scientists capable of developing anything more resistant to death's cold grasp are still alive."

When Uriah raised his eyebrow at this, she added, "This city is comprised almost entirely of people who produce and provide the resources and services necessary for it to sustain itself. We mostly left the tinkering and research jobs to the Earth-bounds."

_This is all assuming no one on Luna would be above committing murder, but she wouldn't want us thinking about that._ "And you're sure there's no way to extend the lifespans of Unnaturals?"

"No one can be positive of that, sir, but I can assure you that, superstitious as she may be, Sabrina Lockhart is nonetheless a charming woman, at least for an Organic."

"This is asinine! Not only are you assuming Lockhart'll find me desirable despite me being a hell-bound heathen in her eyes, you're also under the delusion that she and I can be legally forced to take on the responsibility of raising a family."

"No one's forcing you to do anyth–"

"And for that matter," he interrupted with utter incredulity on his face, "what about the next generations? Are you saying my future children will have to mate with each other to propagate the race?"

"They won't have to, if you can convince them, or ideally Sabrina herself, that there is no vice in alternative impregnation methods. Or genetic engineering could render the risks of inbreeding irrelevant."

Uriah was one more absurdity away from walking out. "And _now_ you want me to deconvert a woman so religious that she would rather expose herself to cosmic radiation than replace her 'God-given' body with a Libertas?"

"Mr. Uriah, please, lower your tone to something more professional," said Zolnerowich with pure authority. Uriah held his tongue, and she continued. "Thank you. Now, let me repeat, sir, that none of us is going to subvert your autonomy here. This is the twenty-first century, for heaven's sake, and you have the right to make your own decisions."

"Excellent."

"However, you must understand that while this issue is sensitive, it deserves to be discussed. Our species has come this far, and we are not ready to give up at the hands of the 'silent killer,' in your words."

"Maybe so, but will you give up at the hands of my right to control my own body? And Sabrina's right to hers?"

"You are making this out to be more black and white than it really is."

"Answer the question."

"Mr. Uriah," said another associate of Zolnerowich's, presumably another senator based on the similar dress, "we would appreciate it if you afforded Governess Zolnerowich her due respect."

Uriah ignored her and repeated his command.

"I do not have the authority to answer that!"

The conference fell silent. Finally, Jane spoke. "Did you just admit, Governess, that you're in over your head here?"

Zolnerowich gave Jane a death glare. "This discussion does not concern you, android."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because I think I speak for all of us here when I say that you would be too dangerous to our cause if left unmonitored, out in the open."

"You can't be serious, Governess," said Uriah. "Jane is harmless. She has more empathy than I've seen in some humans, maybe even myself."

"Empathic or not, Mr. Uriah, she is an android, programmed by a person with unknown motives, and deficient in moral capacity. I am appalled that you would put as much trust as you do in her."

"Truthfully, I see more in her worth trusting than I do in you."

"If that is the case, then perhaps I would do well to imprison the both of you while we carry out our investigation. Seeing as these are circumstances as dire as war, and this would not be the first time someone abandoned the law in wartime –"

"Very well, Zolnerowich," said Jane, standing up, "if you see me as such a threat, then perhaps I'd be better off out of this place." She stretched out her hand, palm facing the screen, and fired her built-in EM gun.

Uriah was mildly frightened at the sight of her swift action, but he'd be lying if he told himself he was ungrateful for what she had done. The sounds of her invisible gunshots pervaded the room as security androids malfunctioned and she severed all electronic ties between the APD and Luna.

He followed Jane through the halls to the door to the station's parking garage, where she stopped after disabling more machines. "Uriah, do you want those other humans to return to Earth?"

"No," he said without hesitation.

"Then it'd be best if you came with me. Out east."

"You're gonna stop them from docking the spacecraft safely, aren't you?" Jane nodded, and he sighed. "Jane, I hate those moonies as much as you do, but I would never kill anyone who didn't deserve it."

"Would you?" She looked dead serious.

"You suspect me? After all I said back there to defend myself? And after what I said to you back in the car?"

"You seem like what Marshall would call a misanthrope."

"Maybe, but so does Marshall himself. Why else would he make you?"

Jane glared, then thought for a few seconds. "All right, Uriah, I'll help you out of here, and if you wanna go find out how to cheat death and leave me alone, go ahead. But don't try to stop me, after what I've done for you."

Who said anything about me needing your help? If I wanted to, I could hang you out to dry right here, let the security 'droids take you into custody. But I don't want to.

"It's a deal."

### PART 2

### GAMBIT

" _When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?"_

– _Mary Shelley_

CHAPTER 6

"What have you been doing the past two days, Sabrina?" said Vladimir Ivanov. "Living under a rock?"

Technically, she'd been doing just that. To compensate for her lack of a Libertas to protect her from cosmic radiation, Sabrina Lockhart had purchased a rather unorthodox dwelling. It was as much an observatory as it was a home, carved out of a lunar structure that had already been a decent shape for the purpose originally, so the expenses were not too steep. What she did have to pay would still be a respectable sum but for the grace of her parents, the publishers of her poetry, and the lawyer who had sued the Russian Federal Space Agency.

"Excuse me for working without an idiot box installed in my home," she droned. _And for not having any friends in this dinky little town, but he doesn't need to know that._

"Right, well, I suppose only an idiot box can alert this town that all the Earth-bounds are dead." He didn't seem too guilty for being blunt, just bitter.

"I agree, and I sincerely hope that's just your odd sense of humor talking."

"It isn't. Earth is a graveyard now, Sabrina. Lemme show you." He led her outside by the wrist with presumption of her consent, speaking without looking at her as they went. "Believe me, I was as incredulous as you when this hullabaloo started. People spread rumors about failed communications with Earth, and by the time I heard it the whole thing sounded like the wacky cries of a doom-sayer. Like Y2K or the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," she deadpanned, tearing away from Vlad's grip.

"Say, as long as you don't believe me yet, now would be a good time to put that squeak of yours to cheery use. Especially given your track record." Sabrina wasn't sure which annoyed her more – that Vlad was giving her grief for what he liked to call her "eternal teen angst," or that he still refused to let the jokes about her infamous voice go. He was lucky he was brilliant and therefore worth keeping on her good side.

They had emerged into the fresh, algae-produced air of Luna's polar dome. This living space was comprised of the features of a greenhouse, a city, and a building. Ponds, forests with nitrate-rich soil, acres of organic and synthetic food farmland, and parks operated alongside the urban dwellings and workspaces of humans.

The dome itself looked like the gigantic ceiling of a supermarket, dotted with advertisements interspersed among a vast network of lights that created the illusion of Earth's day and night cycle. The poles were perpetually sunlit, which was a boon for solar panels outside, but for Sabrina's benefit as much as the other Organic animals', lights dimmed to a few specks of imitation starlight according to Earth time.

From their cliff-top vantage point they could see a dense crowd attempting to bypass the Luna Capitol android security. Enough examples of the iron fist wielded by such security should have given these people a hint, but there are always a select few folks whose resistance is either stupid or honorable depending on the observer.

"See that mob? They want in on the conference that's taking place between Zolnerowich and the not-so-lucky fella who survived the Dethroning, as it's come to be called."

"Dethroning?"

"As in, now humans aren't the dominant species on Earth anymore." _Yeah, well, Henry VIII had a throne. Story of humanity._ "What'll take our place, I don't know. The androids haven't quite made it there yet. Come on, let's get a closer look."

They hopped onto the nearest subway. Vlad saw in Sabrina's eyes that she was hardly convinced. "What would you think, if it turned out I wasn't lying?"

"I don't think you're lying, Vlad," she said almost in monotone, looking around the train to find all the other harnesses unoccupied. "You might be mistaken, though. People tend to be, when it comes to mass hysteria and stories of widespread disaster."

"Isn't that a familiar explanation." He put on a wry grin.

"Hey, I roll my eyes at miracle tales as often as you do. I just find one or two compelling because I have reasons to." A load of good those particular miracles seemed to be doing for her now, but patience was her motto.

"Couldn't have put it better myself. Well," he said as they ascended the steps to the hub of the town, "here's your reason, Doubting Thomas."

The chaos of it all hit the pair like a hurricane gust. The outermost layer of the crowd was steering clear of no fewer than six brawls of human versus machine, the latter proving so formidable as to embarrass all but one of the fighters. This was a woman who disarmed her contender before it could stun her with a globular device.

Sabrina watched her grab the robot, which took the blows of a couple other guards' weapons and made itself even more useful as a metallic mass that she could swing at anyone who impeded her. Just as this resourceful soul made unprecedented progress toward the capitol entrance, she fell upon receiving a paralyzing shot from a Slavic lady who opened the front door.

" _Peace!"_ she shouted in such a tone as to bring all human action within her fifty-foot radius to a halt. Sabrina had only been a victim of this bizarre form of psychological discipline twice before, and were it not for the immobilizing nature of the word in the first place, she would have shrieked upon feeling that brief yet torturous chill down her spine. The sensation would likely be more bearable in a Libertas, but so would more merciful soldiers have eased Jesus's burden at Calvary.

Seeing the placidity of her audience, the woman said, "I suppose it is a small wonder death chose to ensnare the majority of our race recently, for it seems the lot of you are incapable of displaying the most basic signs of civility and sanity. Surely it would occur to the less patient individuals that ensuring the security of those of us who survived would take priority over making a statement about the so-called Dethroning.

"Nonetheless, I can respect your thirst for knowledge about our dire situation, and I am here to slake it." Her eyes swept over the mob. "Citizens of Luna, today my associates and I attempted to have a reasonable dialogue with the survivor, Mr. Dennis Uriah of Aberdeen, Nevada, to no avail. We expressed to him the depth of the predicament, its effect on the stability of our community, and the need for him to do all that he can to help us determine the cause of the catastrophe."

Sabrina's heart sank. _Governess Zolnerowich herself is vindicating this absurdity?_

"Mr. Uriah revealed in his speech a disturbing level of faith in the good intentions of his uniquely emotional robotic companion, which cut short our attempt at diplomacy with a violent attack on the Aberdeen Police Department's lunar communications devices. During the meeting, the man had also articulated his defiance of our plans to benefit the extant individuals in various ways."

Sabrina could have sworn she saw Zolnerowich's most recent visual brush-stroke come to a stop when the governess found her. She seemed to choose her next words more carefully. "Such were the words and actions of a person so blinded by his infatuation with android evolution that he would sooner betray his fellow humans for amoral machines.

"We do not, however, have reason to panic. The next spacecraft disembarkation will be cutting it close if this rogue android can travel by vehicle for twenty-five hours straight, but we possess several thousand times more robotic power to prevent any sabotage attempts." Much as Sabrina disagreed with Zolnerowich's policies, she respected her refusal to sugarcoat the truth. Whatever truth was anymore.

"Our importing of resources will proceed as normal, although I see no reason to think the planet of a singular population will require any of our exports. Mr. Uriah has all the necessities he could ask for, perhaps justly considering his previous life was one of poverty." _Ah yes, another example of a poor soul who speaks falsely yet has no intention of deceit. Someday I'll make a capitalist out of her._

"So much for the practical side of things," said Zolnerowich. "Then there is the more personal impact that this tragedy has had on all of us. Let me make it exceptionally clear that I, as much as any of you, have been scarred by the Dethroning deeply. There is scarcely any way to take in stride the news that only one in every twelve million humans has been spared by a quiet slaughterer.

"Never before has our species seen such a gross waste of emotive, creative, and intellectual potential – potential that is the birthright of countless generations' worth of confident struggle against adversity, especially adversity that comes from within. We have all dedicated years of our lives to unity with those lost people, to love for them, and to pride in them."

_She really is serious,_ she thought in a state of numb horror. _This really has happened. I really am alone. More alone._ Tears intruded upon her outward emotional display with authoritative force, a vestige of Organic humanity that, she realized, would die along with her.

"But it is this remarkable thing that makes today anything but an end for us: It is our power to channel the pain we feel now into, not despair or wrath, but new unity with, love for, and pride in _us_ , the lasting privileged and the hopeful. Each may honor the dead in a way she finds most appropriate, but I do not think any of us can pretend to be up to the task of honoring all those people in one half-hearted tribute.

"As for myself, my job is not to be the universal eulogizer, but a governess. It would be the highest of insults for me to say anything more on the subject than I have." She walked back towards the door without any need to pacify her listeners further. They simply pondered what they had heard and began to depart in sober silence.

All except Sabrina Lockhart, who stepped forward and called, "Anya!" The governess terminated her closing the door behind her, and turned around. The woman before her spoke, not bothering to dry her tears. "Just who do you think you are? Do you think you can make it okay to trivialize our feelings with little more than a pathetic little cheer-up speech? Do you suppose any of us gives a care how unified we are or how proud we are of ourselves? Is it really that apparent to you that we want to be treated like children who need calming down?"

A pause. "Think for one second, Governess! We all just lost our families, our friends, our heroes, our acquaintances we'd parted with before we could ever apologize to them or forgive them. I won't defend the barbarism of some of these people, but they're still _people_. People who expect a great deal more respect and sympathy than you've given them."

Sabrina had injected her speech with such a vitriolic tone by the end as to make Vladimir freeze in anticipation of the worst from her verbal victim. Zolnerowich delivered it, in a sense. "That was as admirable as it was irrational, Miss Lockhart. Come with me, if you'll deign to honor any of my requests by this point. We have much to discuss."

_For someone so antithetical to robots, you sure do act like one, Governess._ She decided to hold her tongue and humor Zolnerowich, difficult as both were. The Organic and the Unnatural proceeded to the latter's office.

* * * *

"Miss Lockhart, if Luna were populated by more people with your honesty, it would be an immensely better community," said Zolnerowich as she took her seat and invited Sabrina to do likewise.

An examination of the table between them showed it to be capable of performing all the functions an office could need, at least if the owner had a Libertas. "Forgive the absence of coffee. I limit my liquid consumption to only the water necessary for brain hydration, of course. I have forgotten what it is like to crave foods and beverages."

"I assure you it's good for the soul, even though, incidentally, I don't drink caffeine. But let's get to the point. Er, flattering as your statement was, it baffles me."

"Your swiftness to jump to the conclusion that I intended to adulate you reveals your narcissism. What I meant was that I could tell you actually believed what you said back there, and if the human race only said things it believed, it would be a greater race." She betrayed her indifference to mores of tact by devoting her eyes' attention almost entirely to the screen built into the table before her.

"Why aren't you looking me in the eyes, Governess?"

"Keep in mind that I am one of the few government officials left alive to manage a complex recovery plan. If possible I leave it to those not speaking, yet sitting within my earshot, to do this, but I wanted this meeting to be private. As I was saying, we could benefit from having your integrity, but not your irrationality. Let us start with your accusation that I was trying to marginalize people's emotions with a – how did you put it? – 'pathetic little cheer-up speech.' I assure you I had the purest of intentions, Miss Lockhart."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as well as with rhetorical fluff. Stop being so glib and say what needs to be said."

"What needs to be said," she replied, looking up only as much as was necessary to see Sabrina's face, "is that grief is an emotion we could all do without. It gets in the way of actually doing things, which is why I saw fit to decline the opportunity to implicate myself in the masses' mourn-fest while affording them the liberty to accept that opportunity themselves. Telling them their figurative tears were a waste of time would only inflame them to the point of further defiance."

She looked off to the side, seemingly trying to distract Sabrina from her moment of a loss for words. "To put it in terms you might relate to, that would be like telling the heathen abortion advocates that they were buying tickets to the inferno with the blood of the fetuses they slaughter. True, in your eyes, but counterproductive as verbal firepower."

_Best to let her have her fun mocking my beliefs, for now._ "Your perspective on the grieving process frankly frightens me."

"Yes, any truth that threatens the dogma of the primacy of the intuitions does tend to unnerve people, even when they would benefit from putting that dogma to rest. But there lies the catch of honest discussion, no? I am just as disturbed by your belief that my expression of my concern for society, delivered in the way I find most comfortable, is somehow so condescending and insensitive as to warrant your level of criticism."

Insensitive? If only Zolnerowich knew. But she could never let that happen, not when they'd all blame the failure of the happy pills on her "incompatibility" with the lunar environment. Worse, they'd try Neurehab. "It still is, uncomfortable as that fact makes you."

"Likewise. As I implied not ten minutes ago, Miss Lockhart, I am a busy woman. My duty is not to kiss the boo-boos of our stumbling species, but to get it running posthaste. Especially," she added, seeming to focus even more on the screen, "with an android on the loose."

Sabrina nodded. "If we can jointly say one thing, it's that this robot is a threat that's more trouble than it's worth."

"Excellent! We can begin to talk business."

"What?"

She looked up and smirked. "Obviously I did not invite you here just to set the record straight on my speech."

"Why did you, then?"

"It concerns our two little problems on Earth. You will recall that I mentioned a human as well."

"Yes, a man I've never had the, ahem, privilege of knowing personally. He must be something else, to have survived the, well..."

"I can understand if you would prefer not to talk about this right now." She was displaying more personal concern by now, but not so much to prevent a few split-second downward glances that irked Sabrina.

"No, you're right. If this is an important matter, I can play the stoic."

"I would never ask you to 'play' anything that goes against your integrity, Miss Lockhart." Seeing Sabrina's weak yet unprecedented smile of approval, the governess continued. "Perhaps I should start with your role as it pertains to the android, which called itself Jane. You can help us all by virtue of your natural body."

Trying not to appear too vindicated after having heard so much raving about the wonders of the synthetic Libertas, Sabrina let Zolnerowich elaborate. "Jane possesses a strong electromagnetic weapon that is a hazard not only to other androids, but also to the Libertas skins. Libertas manufacturers designed them to repel most pulses that could wreck computers, but seeing as Jane is a robot of a caliber alien to us, we cannot risk lives on the bet that her designer gave her a weaker form of EM weapon."

"Just because I can't be killed by Jane in that way, it doesn't mean she isn't dangerous to me in some other sense."

"True, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen. I have also heard that she is insane, but it is not my place to pass judgment on your mental health."

"What exactly do you want me to do, Governess? Be a bodyguard for the Unnaturals? Go to Earth before everyone else in a capsule, so I can keep Jane from sabotaging the module landing in case the other robots fail to stop her?"

"Neither. There will be very few Transhumans for you to defend on this mission, and I have confidence that the police force will be able to handle J–" She had been eying the screen when some image on it muted her.

"Dare I ask?" She had an inkling that made it almost unnecessary.

"I see," Zolnerowich said to herself before looking up. She had that look on her face that screamed, _I gravely underestimated something and there will be hell to pay for it._ "That sly 'droid. Jane got away from the law enforcement bots. Uriah, too. I suppose your services will be needed for the latter purpose after all."

"Just how do you expect me to deal with this maverick? So what if I'm less likely to die at her hands than you are? I like to think my life is worth something."

"Oh, it is, Miss Lockhart, which is why it is fortunate that you not only have a body devoid of electronics, but that you also have a weapon that all of us possess. Emotions. I would not trust Jane any more than a strictly rational android, but it is capable of trusting you, and we can use that to our advantage."

"What makes you think Jane will warm up to me?"

"Several factors. First, Mr. Uriah was able to befriend it. Second, emotional as it is, Jane is not an exceedingly bright android. You could easily lead it to believe you are a second Earth-bound survivor with no motivation to destroy it."

"I never said I really do want to destroy it. Jane's as much my enemy as it is yours, but there's no need to extinguish something that could be an immense benefit to us. Think of what we could do with a robot that applied all the rationality of other models with Jane's sensitivity." She could feel her face brighten, if just a tad. Was it honest-to-goodness enthusiasm? "It's a prototype friendly AI!"

Zolnerowich afforded herself the luxury of actually looking at Sabrina. "Miss Lockhart, if you are to succeed at what I want you to do, you need to abandon any faith in the value of beings like Jane. I am comfortable with reaping the benefits of androids that lack true intelligence, rational or of any other sort. It is a nigh-autonomous robot such as Jane that I find too dangerous to be worth allowing to evolve. If I may imitate your earnest manner, destructive as the Dethroning was, I cannot say I do not appreciate its near elimination of the threat of the Singularity."

Sabrina gave a disturbed look, to which Zolnerowich replied, "Come now, there must be some person, or perhaps group of people, whose death you secretly celebrate. You are a Christian, correct? Who is it – secularists? Death penalty advocates? Muslims? Abortion doctors? Homosexuals?"

"That's enough!" she interrupted. Zolnerowich was taken aback. "Governess, if you think I'm the sort of Christian who would bomb an abortion clinic or harass LGBT people, you have the wrong idea. Have you even met a Christian before?"

"I have not."

So that was it. _Charity, Sabrina, charity._ "All right, then. Now you know. We're not all fanatics."

"We?"

"Uriah could be a Christian, for all you know."

Zolnerowich began to speak, then caught herself. She looked off to the side some more before talking. "You had best hope so, or there will never again be any 'two or three gathered in my name.' Is that how the verse goes?"

"So you know the red-letter quotes. Doesn't mean you have any idea what the Gospel is like in action."

"I will, if you apply it while ridding the world of that android. There is, incidentally, another matter." Sabrina had no objection, so the governess continued. "As liberal a Christian as you are –"

"Not liberal, just sane."

She ignored this. "I suspect you would not balk at the chance to solve the mystery of this, shall we call it, portent of the End Times?"

"I can't be certain one way or another about the theological significance of what has happened, Governess."

"Yes, well, it would behoove us to know what wiped out the majority of humanity, lest we suffer the same fate. You are an intelligent woman, Miss Lockhart, and we need all the ingenuity we can get for this job."

"Thank you for the kind words." Sabrina let the situation sink in, trying to put the darkness out of her mind by thinking like a politician for a moment. "Do you think Uriah did it, Governess?"

"Not likely. He may be a robot sympathizer, but he is not capable of committing mass murder on that scale. At least, not morally capable."

"Is he smart enough, though?"

"Perhaps."

Sabrina rested her chin in her left knuckles, not taking her eyes off Zolnerowich. "Just out of curiosity, is he an Organic or an Unnatural?"

Zolnerowich looked up. "Organic," she said slowly. "Why are you so interested in Uriah?"

"It's hard not to be interested in the last Earth-bound man alive, Governess."

She paused. "Understandable. So you will accept the mission?"

"May I have a few minutes to think about it?"

The governess checked the digital clock on the desk. "Will ten be enough?"

"I think so. And... thanks for not commenting on my, uh, idiosyncrasies." Sabrina shook Zolnerowich's hand and departed, leaving her subtly yet noticeably perturbed.

* * * *

Standing in the hall of the Luna Capitol Building, Sabrina couldn't help but feel more respect for the woman she had so vehemently challenged minutes ago. Anti-emotional as she could be, Anya Zolnerowich was a cool and collected speaker, no question. She had the best interests of her citizens at heart, but it was her treating them as "her citizens" that made her an unlikable politician to Sabrina. Those citizens may have liked the security of subordination, but she knew this was just the societal form of battered wife syndrome.

Sabrina caught sight of several unorthodox digital "paintings" lining the walls, amidst legal documents that were a constant reminder to the politicians here that their first allegiance was to the law.

One such piece of art illustrated, with governmental dignity, the pitfall of polarizing groupthink. All the more reason to believe Zolnerowich was a governess who strove for excellence in optimizing her society, so much so that her work tended to dehumanize her vision of that society. With such responsibility in her hands, who could blame her for having lapses in judgment?

On the other hand, her remarks on the disposability of not only emotional androids, but even the humans who would assemble them, couldn't be so easily rationalized in Sabrina's mind. Could she trust a woman who would rejoice at her and many other Christians' deaths if she didn't have a rogue android on her hands? She thought about this while reading a plaque that read, _Mala informationia cum malis hominibus moriuntur._

Evil ideas die with evil people.

Zolnerowich may have been disagreeable, but of course Sabrina's decision didn't rest on whether she felt like appeasing her. This was a matter of protecting the last hundreds of humans from the malice of a robot, and of revealing the truth about the Dethroning. Might as well do something that had no chance of making her feel useless.

Having decided to keep her distance from the governess yet to fulfill the mission, she returned to the office.

"I'll do it," she said, her hands placed on the table as she remained standing, "but I'm not promising anything. And before you ask, I refuse to let you arrange my marriage to Uriah to keep the species around."

The governess sat with her mouth open, yet silent.

"I gathered. People don't exactly let me forget that I'm the only Organic woman here, and your hesitations and answers to my questions about the last Organic male cinched it."

Zolnerowich returned her focus to the screen, with a ghost of a grin on her face. "Be at the Terrestrial-Lunar Transportation Base by six o'clock."

Sabrina went home to her gateway between Luna and the outside world. She told Vlad to leave her alone, cloistered herself away, and wept for her father.

CHAPTER 7

The Terrestrial-Lunar Transportation Base lay at the heart of the city, and inside it was a firestorm of activity. Frantic supervisors of the operator robots more than compensated for the absence of travelers and incoming citizens. A minority group of rioters still followed officials into the base, demanding the privilege of giving "proper burials" to their loved ones or of ensuring the welfare of Earth-bound animals, domestic or otherwise.

Those riding the command module _Strange_ hastened to receive all the preparation they could get for a mission that could very well go horribly wrong. Most relevant to Sabrina's concerns, the scant engineers and physicists had to work out the kinks of the sole Sonic-speed Space Capsule.

"Sonicap S7-B is among the swiftest of spacecraft for singular transport, capable of a trip from the moon to Earth in no more than ten hours," said Zolnerowich as she walked with Sabrina toward the closest elevator. Spacecraft were launched from a chamber of high altitude that bridged the aerobic and anaerobic regions of the moon. "The catch is that Sonicaps were not designed with Organics in mind. It is simply more cost-effective to make space travel the domain of Transhumans."

"You could have told me this before I committed!"

"Relax. There is an alternative to a quick and risky Libertas installation. You know Vladimir Ivanov?"

"Yes, he's one of my most esteemed colleagues."

"An esteemed colleague who designed a spacesuit that can help you."

"Of course, the _Hybrid_!" Vlad had shown her some schematics of the suit's design, but she'd never viewed the _Hybrid_ as anything more than a provision for extremely rare emergencies until now.

"Right. It basically acts as a Libertas you can put on, and then some. Useless for someone who needs to walk in Earth gravity – its cooling, pressurizing, and radiation-resisting devices are clunky – but as a stationary passenger of the Sonicap, you will benefit from it."

"And you know I'll be safe in this, riding such a rapid spacecraft?"

Zolnerowich smiled. "That's the attitude that can save your life." _You know you've impressed her when she uses contractions._ "And I can assure you our engineers have shared it. They have done their maths, run countless tests, and concluded that an Organic with a _Hybrid_ on will be at no greater risk in a Sonicap than a Transhuman in a slower vehicle. This is even taking your, er, physical youth into consideration."

She gave a "don't-mention-that-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you" look before pretending the subject had never been raised. "Well, you can never be too careful with the last human uterus left, can you?" she said with a smirk to match Zolnerowich's.

The governess didn't take this as a joke. "So you really think that I am playing matchmaker?"

"This wouldn't be the first time a government has claimed authority over its nation's reproductive choices."

"If you refer to China's one-child policy, we are of the same mind there." They stepped out into the chamber. This was the only trans-dome passageway that wasn't at ground level, rather as high up as two Burj Khalifas, which would be more impressive if the laws of geometry didn't render the city's surface area little more than three square miles.

"Yes, it's so easy to denounce that," said Sabrina, trying not to look too awestruck at the expansive space around her, "but when things get difficult, I suspect you'd have no qualms mandating a one-child _minimum_ to keep the train of human achievement a-rollin'."

"Was I the one who wrote, 'Be fruitful and multiply'?"

"I think God would prefer that I know who my future spouse is and choose him for his character instead of for his, ahem, gametes." They strolled toward one of many reduced-gravity training modules on that floor. "Not like I'll find Uriah attractive even in a skin-deep sense. What with my anachronistic hormones and all," she added after a pause in which she almost blushed. "H-How old is he?"

"He looked to be in his older twenties."

"Could be worse, but then..."

"He might be bewildered by the moon's effect on your body?"

By this point Sabrina was giving no eye contact whatsoever to Zolnerowich, looking only at the impersonal and non-judgmental comfort of the door to the Weightless Wonder. _Yeah, that's what I was gonna say._

* * * *

"I think I've got the hang of this, Doctor Finch."

With the doctor's consent, Sabrina exited the training mod proper and removed her _Hybrid_. "Sheesh, did you really have to make it so rigorous?" she said with the exasperation of someone who had just completed a marathon. An Earth marathon.

"That depends," said Finch sternly. "Would you like for something life-threatening to go wrong in the S7-B? You're our only hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and with a 'droid down there a helluva lot more dangerous than C-3PO, we can't afford to lose you to Vader. The Force that he has on the Dark Side is physics."

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. And it was just a rhetorical question." As Sabrina spoke, she casually filled out a digital form in which she reported any physical problems, or lack thereof, with the training segment. She could've just told Finch her concerns, but the bureaucracy was a paranoid mistress. "Really, I'm the queen of complaining afterwards, but I'll do what I've gotta do for the truth and for lives."

He grunted. "Just as long as you don't get killed because you're too busy bitchin'. You did well, anyway, kiddo."

"What did you just call me?"

She could read his mind: _Oh, crap, that's right, I'd forgotten she'd been here so long. Better shut my trap._

So he did, until Sabrina finished the report and rose from her seat. "Thank you, Doctor Finch," she said, shaking his hand. "Assuming the actual trip won't involve the same constant stream of trials, there were no issues here that should concern you. Just give the other folks who'll help me get from here to Earth the memo: don't patronize Sabrina Lockhart."

Zolnerowich was waiting for her outside the door. "There you are!" She grabbed Sabrina by the wrist and all but dragged her to the elevator. _This place has even more floors?_

"Governess, what in –"

"Shut up. We cannot afford to violate the schedule any more than we have, and that means I have to tell what you need to know _now_." Sabrina supposed she'd taken too long in training, and why Finch failed to notice this was anyone's guess, but there was no sense in telling her that. Zolnerowich shoved a PDA in her face, showing a world map of Earth.

"This green dot is the spaceport at which you and your backup will land. Baikonur Cosmodrome, near the Syr Darya in Kazakhstan. Just about a hundred eighty degrees of longitude away from the rogue, which sounds like a game-winner for us, but ours is a shrinking world. Just because public service androids are designed against the risk of dangerous information transfer, if not outright hostile conspiracy, that hardly makes Jane harmless."

Resenting the windows in an elevator taking her to the three hundred sixteenth floor, Sabrina gulped and took the liberty to ask a question. "Are you sure this isn't an unnecessarily hasty mission? I mean, sure, stop the thing from getting the backup travelers, but is it worth cutting corners?"

"Yes, yes, it is!" The governess pointed outside to what looked from here like an ant colony. "Please avoid nausea, but I'd like you to look at that civilization, Sabrina. Hundreds of people who need resources. Life's little necessities don't just grow out of moon-dust."

They do out of stardust, but that takes billions of years and this is Astronomy Nerd Sabrina talking.

"No one's even positive there aren't other survivors in destitute countries who need us now more than ever." By now she was almost yelling. "In the time it takes _Strange_ 's crew to do its job and return, who's to say Jane won't find the port and do something even worse than landing sabotage?"

The door opened. Sabrina said in her meekest voice, "Sorry, I guess I just don't estimate time that well."

Walking with her frazzled mentor into her place of destiny, Sabrina felt that the scariest part of it all was that Zolnerowich had failed to mention two other tiny problems. For all they knew, Jane could be monitoring their plan right now, preparing to strike accordingly. And the maw of the Dethroning just might crunch down on any new humans coming to Earth.

* * * *

"T-minus ten, nine, eight..."

What if I burn up like a meteor reduced by the ruthless atmosphere?

"... seven, six, five..."

What if Jane emotionally manipulates me?

"... four, three, two..."

What if I regret worrying instead of praying for God to save my soul, no matter when or how it leaves my body?

"... one, and we have liftoff! Godspeed, kiddo!"

And what if the last thoughts I have before I die are about how much I hate Doctor Finch for playing telephone with my memo?

The next few minutes were a storm of noise, shaking, incredible force, and, strong as her mental fears were, pure thrill. It was several times more dizzying than a roller-coaster, yet proportionally fun. At least compared to the default of her existence since becoming professionally rooted on that rock. Her last flight had been so long ago due to work obligations – about five years previous – that Sabrina was pleasantly surprised to re-experience the excitement of subduing gravity itself.

In time she descended into the moment, too immersed in it to think about a thing. Sonicaps were so thoroughly automated as to leave her without a care.

"Sonicap S7-B, can you hear me?" Russian accent.

"Loud and clear, Governess. Might I ask why I'm talking to you rather than someone with a little more aeronautical know-how?"

"Because none of those people have both responsibility for your safety, as this was my idea, and knowledge of the good news and the bad news I have for you. Which would you like first?"

"Could you mix them into one neutral piece of news?"

"If by that you mean, could I put them both into one sentence, I shall accept that challenge." The brief lack of speech following was not true silence. The movement was muffled, yes, but still a far cry from the serene impression one could get from images of space.

"Although we managed to catch up to the timetable, our attempts to gain information about Earth from androids in southern Nevada, where Uriah and Jane were when we first contacted them, are failing. There is a pattern emerging here. First there were complications with robots in Sloan, then this phenomenon shifted southwest to the aforementioned region. This gradual 'robotic Dethroning,' to put it in less-than-sensitive terms, is a growing circle. At this rate, the entire state should be swallowed in two hours."

"That's certainly odd, but it could be just as much a bane for Jane as it is for us. That is to say, not a bloody lot, Governess, when our mission centers around Kazakhstan!"

"Myopic, are you not? Sabrina, this growth rate is literally exponential. How and why this is, I cannot know any more than the next person, but this problem started no more than forty hours ago. We treated it like a pool of insignificant bacteria at the time, but with mitotic division and immortality, one bacterium can become quite the deadly foe in a short time." Another pause. "And this is assuming Jane is not the cause herself, as you implicitly doubted."

"This is a robot you yourself said was far more emotionally strong than mentally. But..." It sank in. "I see the threat. Now what can we do about it?"

"I wish I could say I was one step ahead of you, but when we tried to stymie the expansion, the robot 'soldiers' we had sent stopped transmitting info within minutes. Something or someone could be leading a robot front that could turn the entire android race, if we can call it that, against Luna."

How strong Sabrina's resentment of her immobility in that capsule was, only Dilbert might know. "I am not a cursing woman, Governess, but _damn_! Does this mean there's a real probability that I'll find myself confronted by an army of androids when I hit Earth?"

"Not quite."

"What happened to that blunt honesty? Did it go out the window at the same time you pretended there was no re-population plan?"

"We have a defense mechanism for your sake, Miss Lockhart. Actually, more than one. First, Jane does not know at which port you will land. That makes a seventy-five percent chance in your favor already, plus a decent extra chance considering the Sonicap's camouflaged design and its anti-electromagnetic shield. But that is not so impressive when your life is on the line, hence the plan. If our concern is that Jane will expect an early landing, we have an unmanned decoy ahead of you to misdirect her."

"That makes things a little better, but not ninety-nine percent." Sabrina looked out the capsule window to see another Sonicap, which had a more noticeable yet not blatantly attention-drawing color. "Suppose this android can fell a spacecraft from miles away. What if the dummy isn't enough to keep its attention away from me until I land?"

"That brings me to what makes this a 'ninety-nine percent' plan. Even if our mystery robot whisperer is the threat, I see no reason to think he, she, or it can stop the decoy from doing its other duty. We installed in Sonicap S7-C a kind of super EM gun. On command – with a very short lag due to the distance, of course – this cannon will loose electromagnetic pulses in a very specific direction, or, if the case calls for it, across an expansive volume of space. The latter carries with it some obvious risks, which is why it will be a last resort."

_It better be, because if the extra weight that thing's added to the Sonicap ends up putting me in the line of fire when D-Day comes, you can kiss your Noah's wife goodbye._ "So does the other Sonicap have something like a microscope for finding the target before it can find us?"

"Naturally."

"And you let me get so worried, why, now?"

"Well, we cannot be certain the Sonicaps are immune to hijacking. It should be easy enough to finish the job before the offender even knows there is something to hijack, but time can only tell. You have the odds you want, but just because they are good enough to justify our sending you on this mission, it does not mean you do not have the right to have your doubts."

Sabrina took another moment of pseudo-silence to think. "Anything else I should know?"

"I suppose it would please you to hear that, of the citizens of Luna who share your religious sentiments, all of them send their prayers for you. Not so much a loss anymore if it turns out Uriah is not a Christian, right?"

"I always consider it a loss when the Good Shepherd loses a sheep, Governess. Until He finds it, anyway."

Even with Russia's best communications devices, Zolnerowich's laugh sounded fuzzy across miles of vacuous space. "You have a heart of gold there, Sabrina. Let us hope your lord finds me if you are right. Over and out."

Sabrina nodded in spite of herself. "Over and out."

CHAPTER 8

She entered the mesosphere late at night, seconds from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at this speed. Near as she could tell, no one had spotted and attacked S7-C, which had likewise not detected a threat.

That was what made the next few moments so terrifying.

The Sonicap's machinery didn't fail, but without the orders of Sabrina or any Lunian, the spacecraft changed its course and retarded its speed. Communication devices shut down. Looking out the window, she saw that she was headed for the Syr Darya. A helicopter hovered over the river in evident anticipation.

So she'd drawn the one percent out of the deck of fortune, but at least the hacker didn't seem to be killing her. Otherwise, her oxygen reserves would be cut off from the _Hybrid_ , and the vehicle would be rocketing towards solid land at a speed of at least twenty-four thousand miles per hour.

Splash!

Whatever was operating the copter wasted no time in sending a rescue ladder. It was equally prompt in remotely opening the S7-B's escape hatch. Sabrina didn't trust her savior for a second, but she couldn't exactly get out of her burdensome spacesuit while treading water at the same time. She reminded herself of the EM gun inside the _Hybrid_ and climbed the rungs.

The door shut behind her as soon as she entered, finding three humanoid robots standing to greet her. As two of them helped her remove the _Hybrid_ , the other said, in a human upper-tenor voice, "Well, weren't you in a pickle, eh, miss? Glad we could assist ya!"

"'Assist'?" said Sabrina in a voice muffled by a half-stripped spacesuit. "You were the one who directed my vessel towards the river in the first place!"

"Now why would I do that?" The speaker waited until its – his? – helpers finished drying her off in a cylindrical area like a shower, but with high-powered hairdryer-like devices that didn't overheat her at all. In seconds, it was as if she'd never gotten wet. She chose and donned replacement clothes as the conversation continued. "If I didn't want to help ya, I wouldn't have rescued you just now."

"You probably have your reasons, Mister...?"

"Just Zach is fine, thanks. Yes, I am human, before ya ask. I would speak with you face-to-face, but life's too short not to multitask. I have a world to rebuild, here!"

Sabrina kept her arms folded across her chest. "A world to rebuild, or a reason to hide?"

"You can drop the suspicious act, miss. We can't afford to be hostile, not after nature's done that for us. _To_ us. Please, take a seat."

She had to admit that it looked like a comfortable chair, but the title _To Serve Man_ kept coming to mind, so she remained standing. It made her feel just a little less powerless than was the norm. "Where are you taking me?"

"Might you introduce yourself first? Sorry, I just think names help people get along better," said the voice as its conveyor sat.

"Sabrina Lockhart, ambassador from Luna, Federal Subject of Russia. I'm here to investigate the cause of the recent widespread deaths, of which you're clearly aware."

Sabrina expected him to question her motives further, but he wasn't a hypocrite. It was just as well, for she had no intentions of telling this man, who had almost certainly hijacked her Sonicap, about her search for a robot on the lam. Not yet. It was likely he'd controlled Jane as much as any of the other androids in Nevada and beyond. "Pleasure to meet ya, Miss Lockhart. To answer your question, we're going wherever this android is."

A screen, which, before, she couldn't have even told was there on the door opposite her entryway, displayed a repeating five-second clip of what looked like a woman's destruction of the communications devices around her. Only, she wasn't carrying an EM gun. The pulses were coming out of her hand.

Jane.

Sabrina looked more closely, trying to train her mind to memorize what Jane and the man sitting beside it looked like. Bionic as it was, the artificial woman in the video was far more beautiful than Sabrina herself, and with nary a clue as to any artificiality in that beauty at all. Jane's long, wavy red hair brushed aside as the robot thrust its left palm forward, engaging in an intermittent dance of vandalism.

As the clip recurred, Sabrina watched the man, one of apparently two survivors of the Dethroning, turn to his companion in surprise and get up in a vain attempt to stop it. He had dark skin, appearing as young as Zolnerowich had said he was, dressed in the raggedy garments of poverty.

"What's this about?" she asked, still playing poker with the truth as her captor didn't deserve it. No one without something to cover up would have flown under the radar of Luna's search for survivors.

"You must know, if ya come from Luna. Isn't there news on the moon?"

_Stupid. Knowing that doesn't equal placing a bounty on Jane._ "Actually, now that you say it, I did hear about an android who cut off the government's meeting with Dennis Uriah."

"That's the one. The 'droid in question is a bot named Jane, incidentally designed for purposes I don't care to speak of in the presence of a woman."

This was what they were up against? A toy for a man too cowardly to find a real woman? "How'd you get this footage?"

"Well, though you wouldn't know it from my Boston twang, I'm from southern Nevada, as a matter a'fact. I've made some, er, acquaintance with robots in that area, including some in the Aberdeen Police Department."

"'Acquaintance with robots'?"

"Sure. I was devastated when I found out the people I loved had died, of course. Buried them myself, though I gotta say it's a doozy to find interment ground when ya live in the most deserty place." He laughed somewhat nervously.

_Even more difficult when the bodies are separated from you by more than two hundred thousand miles._ Sabrina frowned and looked down at her folded arms.

"But it comes time to move on, y'know? I was hoping a moon person like yourself would come eventually, and in the meantime I figured it was my duty to clean up this mess. Can't do that without robot buddies, can ya?"

"I suppose not," she said slowly.

"Well, you can imagine what it was like when I found this video. Another survivor, and he's friends with a hot-tempered bot who's an enemy of the Lunar Republic! I presume you know Governess Zolnerowich. Based on her talk with these two, I have a feeling Jane's gonna mess with the Lunar ambassadors' visit to Earth."

Sabrina nodded. "That's why I came earlier. I was trying to land at the same place they're going – Baikonur Cosmodrome – but _someone_ , and I'm not saying you, changed my flight path."

"Pennies from heaven, am I right, Miss Lockhart?" Zach laughed. "Now that I've found you, we can stop this crazy 'droid together!"

"I'm not so sure that's a prudent idea, Zach."

"Why not?"

One of the lackey-bots offered Sabrina a glass of wine, which she declined. "I have orders from Luna's government, and they wouldn't be pleased with any fraternization between an ambassador and a person whom I still find it difficult to trust. Even if we do have the same goal."

"How can I convince you I'm trustworthy, then?"

"Tell me your full name, for starters."

He hesitated, then, in a fearless voice, said, "Isaac Livingston."

"Do you have a computer with wireless Internet access?"

"You're not gonna give me a background check, are you, Miss Lockhart?" The android held up a hand, prompting the lackey-bots, who'd begun to fetch the computer, to halt.

"I think I have a right to do so. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." Sabrina unfolded her arms and held them both out on either side for a moment.

"Only if I can check you as well." The oracular robot nodded to its helper, which strode off to the left.

_Hey, not as if I have any skeletons in my closet. Except my own, with flesh and organs on it._ "Sounds fair. But I'll need a middle name to make the search more precise."

"Ronald."

The search showed Isaac Ronald Livingston to be mostly harmless – a moderately wealthy chess grandmaster whose professional history revealed an obsession with defeating the Psych. Decades ago, humans had been astonished that a computer could beat an expert chess player even once. Now, the Psych android was a chess legend that the pros found impossible to win a single game against.

"As a chess enthusiast, I'd be crazy not to be pulling my hair out over this thing. Still haven't beaten it, but I've come the closest of any human. Not everyone would say that's something to be proud of, of course." He half-chuckled.

"Congratulations," she mumbled. _What else have you done with your life, Zach?_ Other search results showed the origins of Livingston's Libertas, which he'd had since he was seven. Normally, parents had been wary of having their children put through Libertas installment surgery, not only because of complications with their developing brains and specialized artificial nutrition, but also due to the frankly disturbing nature of the subsequent disconnect between brain maturity and physical size.

As a victim of a mutilating skiing accident, young Livingston was in an exceptional situation, and given the choice between a life imprisoned in a highly disabled body and one complicated by premature removal from such a body, he and his parents took the latter.

Sabrina couldn't help smiling – _smiling_ – at the irony, given her own incongruous mental and physical age. "Is that why you won't talk to me in person, Zach? Afraid I'll laugh at your short robotic body?"

"Tee-hee. Because you've given me so much to worry about that. Nah, that transition to my liberated exoskeleton was the best thing that ever happened to me, and it relieved a boatload of pain, thank you very much."

"Just a joke," she said with a shrug, continuing her snooping. _Be thankful I'm not giving you a patronizing speech of Zolnerowichian proportions._

A hit towards the bottom of the search page caught her eye. "'Registered sex offender'? Care to explain this?"

"Th–" He stopped, seeming to think better of it. Some sounds of agitated movement came through. "Ah, might as well own up to it. You can read. I did it, it was stupid, and it's been a scar on my reputation for years. People exaggerate this kind of stuff to the point of insult to other crime victims. There really isn't a decent legal reason for it, but it's all a matter of cultural glorification of viol–"

"Just quit while you're behind," said Sabrina loudly. Considering he couldn't exactly touch her here, and there was always the EM gun if he tried any funny business using the androids, she saw it best not to dwell on the subject. "I'll pretend I don't know about this on one condition."

"Hey, I haven't even seen your record yet. I respect you too much to expect anything, but this game's more fun when you play by the rules, right?"

A not-too-thickly-veiled compliment hidden in a verbal ploy to dodge the blood on his hands. How classic. "See for yourself. Middle name's... Cheryl." Waiting as he did so, Sabrina checked the window to her left for a distraction from that name. Dark as it was in twilight, she managed to see that they'd apparently been flying over the river the entire time. On either side of the water was an expanse of generally arid, brown-shaded land. "So you said we're pursuing Jane, right? Where exactly do you think she'll be?"

"Not 'think,' _know_." The helper bot was a rapid typist, distractingly so. "I'll admit it, Sabrina, if I may use that name. I've taken over that other spacecraft like yours flying up there." She blinked. "It's basically a satellite now. Gun's locked, not that I have any reason to bring this copter down with you anyway, as you can help me if I can find some dirt to level the playing field."

"You don't need to blackmail me," she said with a gulp she hoped wasn't audible. "Like I said, I have a condition –"

"Oh, it's not a matter of blackmail, it's one of making this alliance relationship easier." _Trust me, you don't want a relationship with this girl. She'll inadvertently ruin your life somehow._ "Anyway, I know thanks to S7-C that our foe hitched a ride on an automated airplane to the northwestern Plestsy Airport. Androids don't care if almost all the human population has been wiped out, they'll still do their jobs, God love 'em."

"It thinks the other ambassadors are landing near there?"

"Seems that way. We can catch her at Plesetsk Cosmodrome when we find a little speedier aircraft." As Sabrina took a closer look at the monitor, he made a contemplative noise. "Well I'll be! You're the only Organic from Luna. I'm impressed. Oh, don't look so offended," he added when she appeared scornful. "This article says you're Organic for religious reasons. Hardly egalitarian to look down on us for 'disrespecting the bodies God gave us.'"

"All right, if you wanted dirt, you have it now. I'm Miss Judgmental, that what you wanna hear?"

Sounds of shuffling in discomfort came through, and Livingston cleared his throat. "You also have 'defiance of robotic authorities' on your criminal record. Just a juvenile offense, no jail time, but it's there."

That opened up old wounds for her. Not because she regretted what she'd done – on the contrary, that was one of her proudest moments. It was simply tied to one of her most sorrowful moments, and at the time she hadn't been proud of the act. "That was entirely justified. I was trying to save someone's soul."

"How do you do that?"

Sabrina replied, even knowing his voice betrayed a more disdainful response if he were honest. "Let me put it in context. This happened in my last year of long-term residence on Earth. I was twelve. My cousin got... sick." She shook her head. "No, that's not quite the word. Think of it as something like the deaths of all these people just two days ago. She didn't drop dead instantly, but the... affliction... that hit her was just as inexplicable even to experienced doctors."

She didn't continue for a while. "Go on," said Livingston. "Unless you're uncomfortable telling me this."

_Well, of course I'm uncomfortable! I'm talking about a suffering child here!_ "No, no, if we're gonna work together it's best that I explain myself. Anyway, this cousin – let's call her Zoe – was in serious pain. Her frequent screams about it proved that much. There was always a severe headache, sometimes even to the point of horrible vomiting, and delusions and hallucinations that made her react violently.

"Once, she thought the medical 'droids were trying to, well, put her out of her misery, when in fact they weren't even in her room. But some humans were, including me. Zoe attacked me just as I got close to her, so we could talk." She sighed. "Weeks passed, and the doctors couldn't lift a finger to help her. They said they'd tried every plausible diagnosis imaginable, but I didn't buy it for a second."

She switched her gaze sharply from the window to Livingston's android. "These are medical robots we're talking about! They're supposed to be able to diagnose and cure with a hundred times the efficiency of a human. So I got a human doctor I knew, a family friend and a pathologist who'd lost his job in the growing 'robopoly.' You know the story. I tried to let him give a second opinion, but the doctors wouldn't hear of it."

"That was your demerit? Surely the guy you solicited knew better than to just walk into the hospital and demand to see the patient."

"He did. There's more to the story. While that doctor was making legal appeals, suggesting the possibility that the robots had miscalculated, I was finding the situation more and more absurd. I thought about what Zoe was going through, and I wondered if she wouldn't be better off without all that pain."

"You won't kill your body to put your brain in a Libertas, but you're fine with the idea of killing your cousin's body to relieve her of pain?"

"I know, it sounds like euthanasia, and it was, which is exactly why I decided against it, even though it was tempting." _Let me finish my thoughts,_ her expression said. Even if they were less than honest. "What really got me about Zoe's condition was what I thought could happen to her after she died. For her whole life, Zoe had been the sweetest, most innocent kid you'd come across. I couldn't even fault her for her dangerous behavior in the hospital. She was mentally ill, after all."

By this point, Sabrina spoke more slowly and deliberately. "But she was getting to that age, of responsibility, you know, just as I was. And around that time, I'd started feeling this connection with God."

"Please tell me this was a benign 'connection.'" Livingston's robot finished typing, making the dominant nonverbal sound the revolutions of the helicopter propeller.

"I wasn't hearing voices or anything, like a schizophrenic. Still, this was something that went beyond my usual, honestly, one-sided experience of God at work in my life. When I had this sensation of communicating with God, it was like some, y'know, conscientious guidance was affirming my..." Her voice became shaky after some hesitation. "... idea. Not my own mind, someone else."

"Your idea?"

"It was a scary idea at the time, one that I don't like sharing with people, even though I stand by it. If you knew it, you might think it makes your past of harassment seem innocuous." She crossed her arms again and looked down. "But those are your priorities."

"Do I have to know what it is to understand why you disobeyed the medi-bots?"

"No, and I wasn't planning to tell you. I'll leave it up to your imagination. For now, suffice it say I tried to act upon this idea, but an adolescent can only get so far."

No one said a word for what felt like minutes. Sabrina simply appreciated that Livingston didn't pursue more info on what happened to Zoe, and asked one of the androids if she could have that wine now. She also wondered why she'd told Livingston as much as she had.

Was it possible she was beginning to trust this man? They did seem to be flying in the right direction, and if he did lie about his identity, wouldn't he have picked an alias with more credibility? True, it was highly unlikely that he hadn't purposely thrown the S7-B hurtling into the river, and that he wasn't Zolnerowich's 'robot-whisperer,' but was either such a bad thing? He'd provided a quicker way to the Plesetsk spaceport, he was displaying almost total benevolence to her so far, and he did have a decent motive for taking over those androids. Plus, she had Zolnerowich, and by extension the police force, on her side if things got out of hand.

Sabrina took a sip of red wine, not worrying too much about the effects it could have on her immature body, and said, "Is that enough dirt to make this an alliance we can work with?"

"More than enough. Honesty is a beautiful thing, isn't it? You can't tell, but I have a drink of my own. Shall we toast?"

Sabrina's fingers that weren't wrapped around her glass moved to the comforting shape of her EM gun, which she'd hidden in her undergarment. "To humanity."

"To humanity!"

* * * *

Before they'd landed at the site of their vessel to Plesetsk, Sabrina had done two things of note. She'd asked Livingston if they would meet in person, to which he'd answered, "Of course. I'll meet you at Balqash Airport. We'll have to make introductions snappy, of course, as there'll be plenty of time for chat on the plane, but between the copter's landing and takeoff, time is of the essence."

Satisfied, she'd also requested a means by which she could report to Luna. "Ah, yes! Poor folks up there must think you've crashed or something. Number Seven'll bring ya a headset."

This attempt at communication had failed, as much to Livingston's perplexity as hers. In response to Sabrina's accusatory look, he had said, "Right, because I'd block you from speaking to people who could make this mission much easier than it otherwise will be."

"Motives are complicated, especially malicious ones."

Notwithstanding, Sabrina had waited the flight out to the alighting in southeast Kazakhstan.

Stepping out into air that was cool yet foreboding of the coming summer, her eyes instinctively drifted toward nature's dome, Earth's nighttime atmosphere. "A window to the cosmic panorama of starlight," as Dad had called it. She loved the moon for its ability to magnify the ease of astronomy, but Earth had been her home for about half her life, and there would always be something special about the experience of stargazing from the vantage point of its surface. It had been on this globe that she'd met the moon and the stars, and for that it would forever hold a place in her heart.

But the next recipient of her attention was a great deal closer. Balqash Airport's traditional design was alive and well, its pentagonal face staring out from the middle of two wooded areas. One could almost mistake it for a library. Striding out from its middle arched doorway to greet her was a smiling Caucasian man, dressed in a bright red two-piece. He seemed almost too happy, in a mildly creepy childlike sense, but it wasn't her place to judge.

He extended his right hand and said, "Sabrina! How pleasant to meet you in person!"

She accepted the handshake. "Likewise." Seeing not much else on which to comment, partly because of how surprisingly amiable Livingston's impression was, she remarked, "Well, there's the snappy introduction for you. Shall we go?"

"Certainly."

Amazingly, the management of this airport's hamfisted system found a way to synthesize a waiting period of at least twenty minutes out of a situation with only two passengers on the next flight to Plesetsk. Most of that was spent in security checks and various bureaucratic measures. "You don't seem surprised at my... stature," said Sabrina.

"Well, I saw you through my android earlier, didn't I? I'm not the type to keep gawking, unless there's some body language I'm using that you know better than I do."

"You have no body language, which isn't even common in Transhumans. The lack of it, I mean."

"The body lies quite often, anyway."

Obviously, metal detectors wouldn't suffice to check for weapons on Transhumans, leaving Livingston with only the usually embarrassing pat-down option. He showed no shame at this, however.

"See, that's what I mean!" said Sabrina as she passed under the machine. She'd questioned their mutual lack of electromagnetic guns on this journey, but Livingston had simply said that he had a plan. "I don't want to offend you – heck, I wish I could be like that – but most people would have too much pride to take a groping for public safety, without a smidge of hesitation. Even if it's just 'droids."

"None taken," he said with a smile and a warm, if premature, reaching of the arm around her back onto the opposite shoulder, pulling her towards him somewhat. "I guess I just have this talent for swallowing that petty sense of dignity. Or any emotion that could override my reason. Sometimes that happens before I know I'm being irrational at all, so it really only works when I expect emotions to be an obstacle."

"So if you were about to go skydiving, knowing you'd experience fear normally, you could just shut that fear off?" When his hand found its way into her hair, she shifted away, trying to smile to keep him from lingering on the implications of that.

"In theory."

"And if you found yourself in a situation where you had to save someone's life, even if you felt scared to death, you could mask that feeling and just do it?" _You could get rid of your empathy instead, but I probably shouldn't remind you of that._

"Don't get any ideas." Another hearty grin. Even with her preferences, not to mention suspicions, he was quite the bowl of charisma. "That goes for ideas about asking how I can do what I do. Every person gets one secret they can take to the grave. Yours is your 'idea,' and this is mine."

They took seats in a waiting area not far from the transit corridor that connected the terminal to the plane. Staring at the tile pattern of the wall opposite her, playing mindless games with it to avoid the dead people all around them, Sabrina asked, "Do you have any guesses about how all this happened?"

"Well, there's this thing called the Big Bang Theory..."

"Don't be a smart aleck. I mean 'this' as in the Dethroning."

"Is that what they're calling it these days? As if we've always been the kings and queens of Earth?"

"Just answer the question," she said in a voice she hoped wasn't too exasperated.

"It's not easy to infer what could have caused what amounts to a mass coma. This is really bizarre stuff." He stretched and crossed his legs, touching his chin with deliberate histrionics. "Couldn't be a disease, or else we'd see some warnings. These people would've weaken somehow beforehand. I don't think there's any kind of radiation or chemical warfare that could affect all but two people with no remarkable physical features." He paused and looked at her. "You don't think there's some supernatural explanation for this, do ya?"

"Not necessarily." She made an effort not to look back. The superficial sincerity of his face made it so easy to forget that he'd kidnapped her. "God would have to be pretty arbitrary to kill off most Earth humans but not the Lunians."

"A supernatural explanation doesn't have to mean 'God did it,' but for all we know it could be some Noah's Ark situation. It's a long shot, I know. What virtue could you, me, Uriah, and those other hundreds of people on the moon share?"

"Well, there are ways of knowing what God wants, and this sort of speculation isn't one of 'em. I say that now we've had time to – to process the grief and such –" She lost her voice. All that could come out was a whisper of, "Stop," that even she couldn't hear. After a deep breath, she added, "Maybe it'd be best to take this opportunity to help the world in some way we couldn't do before. I don't know what yet, this all seems so... random." She sighed, idly staring at her fingernails. "But that's the catch, isn't it?"

"Believing that it's all for a greater good, you mean? I can respect that."

Regardless, she doubted either of them could live as if they really believed it.

After some silence, Sabrina slapped her palm to her forehead. "Of course!" She got up and activated one of the simple public computers built into the ottoman. Livingston said nothing in query, but she could tell he was lurking over her shoulder. "I may not be able to talk to Mission Control from down here, but I can send a digital written message."

Livingston nodded and leaned back. "You'd better hurry. Plane leaves in three minutes."

"The lag is negligible. I should be fine."

The ding of a sent dispatch rang out shortly. When Sabrina leaned back as well, she looked at Livingston, now considerably less apprehensive with a lifeline to Luna. "So what's your plan? We're totally unarmed."

"I have a way with robots, Sabrina, including pilots. Most men would trade that skill for a way with women, but personally I see more benefits in the former."

"Is one of which getting whatever weapons you'd like from 'droids?"

"You could say that."

"So why not just smuggle in some EM guns and disable the security back there?" She glanced back towards the region of the aerodrome from which they had come, but thought better of it when she saw one of those haunting bodies. She'd anticipated them before entering the building, trying to keep her tunnel vision as they walked through, but the image was inescapable.

"It's less fun that way. We can get something from the plane that takes a little more imagination to work with." He grinned with the mischievousness of a kid thinking of the best way to destroy an elaborate block structure.

Sabrina increased her distance from him by about an inch. "You enjoy this responsibility?"

"I like robots, Sabrina, don't misunderstand me. Sometimes I have more sympathy for them than for humans. That's just what happens when ya know 'droids like few humans know 'em."

He locked his hands together behind his head and looked out the window across the room. "But just like with humans, sometimes it's necessary to take out a bad egg who's a threat to the innocents, and when the fun way to do that also happens to be more humane, so much the better. You'll see what I mean. Jane's better off disabled, as a likely conspirator of mass murder. 'Sides, it's not like it'll mind, now that the man it served is dead."

She checked the computer, but there was no reply, which, by modern standards of communication, struck her as reason for concern.

"I never thought of it that way," They got up and approached the transit corridor, for a friendly android had announced it was time to board the plane. "It'd be like taking someone raised as a blacksmith's apprentice centuries ago into this age. What would that person do, then? He'd have no way to apply himself in a fully-fledged career, because now we just use robots for that job."

"Every minute that Jane lives is a minute of emotional pain. Since I don't see any way we can make it live for someone other than Marshall, it's a liability to itself as much as to us. Sad, but true."

They'd bought first class tickets for the fun of it, on Livingston's insistence. Sabrina and Livingston sat across from each other in luxurious futons, a coffee table between them. "Would you believe," said Livingston as he picked out a novella from the 'library' built into the table, "that things get worse for poor Jane?"

"Besides that Governess Zolnerowich wants it deactivated just because she hates robots?"

"Worse than that."

Sabrina looked as curious as she did worried.

"That bot manipulated Dennis Uriah. Thought it was helping him when it stopped me from trying to rehabilitate him after he had a nasty accident."

"A robot can't do that, can it?"

He nodded grimly. "Can, and did. She's too dangerous for her own good. The sadder thing is, he's still falling for it. He tried to kill me, even, which is why I'm afraid I just might have to do something about him as well."

CHAPTER 9

As the flight paths of Livingston's and Jane's planes converged, Sabrina's unease at what Livingston had told her about Uriah grew. Sure, she wasn't too keen about the notion of an arranged marriage for no deeper reason than utilitarian reproduction, especially when the impression she had of Uriah as a person and as a mate scarcely matched her ideal.

At the same time, occupying herself with one of the complimentary word puzzles, she found herself fearing for the fate of a man upon whose reproductive organs rested the future of human civilization.

That was, assuming the world would go about its affairs according to her ethics, but such was wishful thinking. Although reliably functional artificial wombs didn't yet exist, she could picture the government going to drastic lengths to impregnate her without him, perhaps even against her will.

It was insane, but she could understand it on some far-reaching, twisted level. To let the human race go extinct now would be tantamount to jumping off Mount Everest after reaching the halfway mark to the summit. _Evil ideas die with evil people,_ said Zolnerowich's poster, but good ideas die with good and evil people, too.

All the literature written and preserved by people, dead.

All the music whose lyrics and melodies touched people's souls, dead.

All the magnificent architecture in which the business of society took its course, dead.

All the philosophy and theology of beings struggling to clear the fog of absurdity and ambiguity, dead.

All the art of creatures with a sense of the whole greater than the sum of its parts, dead.

All the memories and records of unifying moments that embodied the height of love and joy, dead.

All the science and technology, a testament to the curiosity and industrious genius of some human minds, dead.

Barring either the preservation of robots as supposedly human-like as Jane, or a visit from extraterrestrials, these fruits of human labor would be like the proverbial falling tree. It exists, but with no one to hear it, one could say it doesn't make a sound.

Yet Sabrina told herself that all this wasn't worth the darkening of any number of souls. Though more souls might be born as a result of ungodly reproduction, they'd be doomed to repeat the sins of their parents, one of the deadliest of which was the treatment of humans as means rather than ends in and of themselves.

Hence, as she deduced the eight-letter answer to the clue "obscure things," Sabrina elected to find a healthy middle ground here. Reluctantly entering a loveless marriage that she had no reason to believe God was calling her to – that was no option. But she would neither wish death upon Uriah nor harden her heart to the possibility that he could truly be meant for her.

Would God surprise her, against the evidence of her very genes?

Livingston snapped Sabrina out of her reverie of verbal and moral dilemma. "It's time."

When the weight of those two words registered, she gave her uneasy reply. "You're sure this won't be, y'know, cruel to Jane or anything?" She followed Livingston toward the cockpit.

"Positive. It'll be down before it even knows it's being attacked." _It._

A security android accosted them when they approached the autopilot machinery. "Please present your warrant for search of this area of the plane, sir."

"Watch the wizard at work, Miss Lockhart," he said in undertones. Then, louder, "Well, I'm afraid I can't provide that, but I do have this form that you may find satisfactory." Livingston produced a Softsheet from his pocket, which the android remotely analyzed before feeding into its input system.

After a few seconds, the bot regurgitated the Softsheet and handed it to Livingston. "Acceptable, sir. You have permission to examine the cockpit at your leisure, under supervision."

"Naturally."

Sabrina held her mouth open, brow creased. "How did that work? Robots have a _very_ high standard of evidence in risky circumstances like these. I mean, that's why human pilots are out of business!"

"A good magician never reveals his secrets," he said with a knowing grin.

"Let me see the form."

She took it regardless of his consent. It was a wordy document that said less than it read, the gist of which was that Livingston had permission to search classified areas granted by the Prime Minister of Russia, who apparently feared "robotic terrorism."

"This is prepost–"

Livingston pressed his index finger to her lips and said to the security bot, "Excuse me, may I have a word with this young lady before I conduct the search?"

They left the cockpit. Affronted, Sabrina said, "Did I miss something, or is there freedom of speech in this country?"

"There is, but there's also the freedom of decency. The least you could do was let me finish my business until that 'droid was out of earshot."

"Maybe so, but your 'business' seems pretty deceitful to me. No way in a sane world could you just waltz into a cockpit, show a form to an intelligent robot, and gain the liberty to search it on the grounds that the Prime Minister said you could. Even assuming you know who the Prime Minister was."

"Like I said, there's a magic touch I gave to that form. Not everyone deserves to know the truth about some things, and that goes for you as much as for security androids." He moved towards the front of the plane, perhaps too eagerly, but Sabrina stayed where she was.

"Withholding truth is one thing, but distorting it is something I'm not comfortable with, Zach. Be honest with me. When you said you were going to 'do something about' Uriah, what did you mean?"

He sighed. "Sabrina, we don't have time to talk about this. Better to get Jane in the air than when we're at Plesetsk and it can see us."

"I won't go along with any ways of 'getting' Jane until you tell me how you plan to 'get' Uriah. Are you willing to kill him?"

"Why would you ask such a thing?" Chuckling, Livingston seemed to be fighting to keep calm with his emotional suppression mechanism.

"Because you haven't made it easy to trust you!" She raised a finger and repeated this with other fingers as she added examples. "In the hours I've known you, you've rigged my landing so that I would end up in your helicopter – don't pretend that wasn't you – tried to justify a past of sexual predation, illegally seized command of a potentially dangerous Sonicap, touched me in a way too close for comfort at this stage of our relationship, likely blocked my communications with Luna despite your thin cover, and shown a control over your emotions and the actions of robots that I just find... unnerving."

For the first time since Sabrina had met him, Livingston displayed hints of anger. "Oh, so it's unrestrained emotion you want? Why didn't ya say so?"

"Not totally unrestrained, just natural. I know it sounds kind of petty, almost jealous, but I think the way you display emotion is just unhealthy. Real people don't put on the kind of facade you do unless they're plotting something."

"Facade? You think this is all an act? God forbid I try to make the world a little more pleasant!" He caught himself and became his amiable self again, putting his hand on Sabrina's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm better than this, and so are you."

He was only proving her point, but she had to pick her battles. "Fair enough, but I'd like it if you'd just admit what you've done wrong and show me the real you. Can you blame me for doubting someone so... powerful?"

Only "doubting" was the wrong word. It wasn't doubt, but fear, and Livingston could surely see that as she pulled away.

Livingston said nothing for some time, retracting his hand and looking away in thought. "Okay, Sabrina. There's no fooling you. Yeah, I did all those things you said I did." He faced her with imploring eyes, as if afraid of losing her. "Still, you put your faith in me up until now, and for good reason. I brought you here because I knew you'd need help dealing with Jane and figuring out the Dethroning. You were heading for the wrong spot, and if you'd kept up your route, not only would Jane be suffering longer, there's no telling what that unstable robot could've done in the time you would've spent preparing a defense. Sorry, but this situation calls for preemptive measures."

"Zolnerowich would've told me Jane's location."

"Too late for such information to be any use."

Sabrina paused. "And your other transgressions? I suppose defending harassment was necessary, too?"

"No, it wasn't. That was just my ego. I neglected to mention that thanks to Neurehab, my, er – history – is moot. Figured it was enough to let ya see that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, but I guess that was naive of me."

"Fine, three to go." She was not going to let this guy make a fool out of her. "I'll be generous and let the emotional control thing slide."

"Thanks. The Sonicap is obvious. I couldn't have Zolnerowich mistaking me for a threat. Same for cutting your line to Luna. You don't need their 'help,' if you can call it that."

Her brows lowered and her hands went on hips, but she let him go on.

"Bureaucrats on a blood hunt to pacify the masses, that's all they are. They don't respect you, Sabrina. You know that."

"Maybe, but the better question is, how do you?"

Just then, they both began to feel a sinking sensation.

They darted to the cockpit, Sabrina shouting, "Do you know how high we are?" Which translated to, how much time do we have until we're dead?

"High enough that we can hit Jane where it hurts and grab some parachutes in time." Seeing that the safe he must have intended to raid by hacking its password was locked by its deactivation, Livingston plucked a ring off his finger and handed it to Sabrina. "Would've like to have used the firepower in there, but we'll have to make do with something I sneaked on-board."

"I thought you got a pat-down?"

"Yes, but the 'droids wouldn't suspect any danger in these. They may not be very fashionable, but they're discreet, at least. I always have a Plan B, Miss Lockhart." He led her to the emergency exit, next to which was a compartment of skydiving equipment.

"Put that little bugger around your pointer finger and get a parachute ready."

She didn't like the idea of taking orders from a liar, but survival took priority.

Livingston placed a visor over his eyes. "Ya won't need one of these. Now here's what we're gonna do. On the count of three, we'll jump out at the same time. With this" – he pointed to the visor – "I'll find and lock onto the parts of Jane and its plane we need to nab. All you have to do is point that finger outward and touch the ring with another finger after fifteen seconds. By then I'll have found the targets, and the ring'll fire pulses toward the targets accordingly. Then you pull the ripcord of the parachute and land safely."

It's a sad fact of life that people are most courageous when they have no choice otherwise, as Sabrina reasoned that she had nothing to lose by taking the leap. "Here we go."

The seconds of free fall gave her that brief shock characteristic of a dive into relatively cold water, only things didn't get any better from there. The catalyst was a single thought. After counting, _one, two, three,_ the notion hit her: _What if he planned all this so that the parachute doesn't work and I die?_ She dismissed it just as soon as it came, but it threw off her timing. _What was I on? Nine, ten..._

Twelve seconds in, she jerked the tip of her middle finger on top of the ring.

The doubts seemed to add to gravity's resistance to the drag her open parachute created, but she soon found the reassuring sight of a second falling aircraft. Yes, it was definitely Jane's.

But there was another entity rushing toward the Earth at a hazardous speed, and it was wearing a red suit.

* * * *

What was going on? Had Sabrina miscounted and accidentally disabled his parachute somehow?

That was absurd. She might've done something wrong with the weapon ring, perhaps fired the pulses before Livingston could finish locking on, but a mechanical parachute would be grossly inefficient. Could Jane have a firearm, or...?

All Sabrina knew was that Livingston's Plan B didn't include the advantage of landing in a safe area. She was headed straight for a sector of what appeared to be a microcosm of space travel machinery, which looked about six miles away from Plesetsk.

She hated herself for taking comfort in the helplessness of her situation. She'd learned to view death in much the same way, as something morbidly beautiful in that man's confrontation of it is his one chance to accept that he is impotent to change it, and to make the best of that submission. Perhaps the soothing aspect of inescapable disasters is that there's no reasonable fear of failure to overcome anything. A fear she was no stranger to.

The mini-city transformed before her eyes into a cluster of towers near a launch site. So it could be worse. Sabrina landed on the roof of a tower, chilled to the bone in the Russian early morning air.

Livingston was nowhere to be found, and he wasn't responding to her comm. It suddenly struck her that she'd left the _Hybrid_ on the plane as well. _Stupendous._

Could Jane have killed Livingston? It was a demoralizing thought. Either he was still alive because he would surely be capable of subduing Jane as easily as any other robot, or Jane was more formidable than anyone on the moon could have imagined, enough to bring down one of the only two Dethroning survivors.

If he hadn't died back there, she could see no obvious alternative explanations. Jane wouldn't be so dim as to target Livingston's parachute and not his life-supporting apparatus, knowing he was an Unnatural.

Sabrina reached ground level as a sickening possibility occurred to her. Perhaps she'd killed Livingston herself.

No, that was equally ridiculous as her breaking his parachute. Livingston was smarter than Jane if Zolnerowich's word was to be trusted, and would he gamble his life on Sabrina's ability to count to fifteen precisely?

This didn't add up. After all, how advanced a defense mechanism could Jane, a tool for gratification, have? It was the only option she could honestly accept, especially since Livingston would've manipulated the bot earlier were it feasible, but it simply made a mockery of all reason.

Her ears and fingers grew numb as she ran to the landing site Zolnerowich had specified yesterday, weighing the probability that the other ambassadors were in danger of sabotage. Basically, it was a question of whether Jane was intact.

Or was it? She didn't like to think of Livingston as a potential menace. He could be dead, and even if not, he'd given her little reason to doubt his sincerity. His methods were questionable, of course, but so were Zolnerowich's. And her own. Could a man with that much tact and warmth be a murderer?

Still, as Sabrina kept her eyes ahead toward the base, seeing her breath like a specter that solidified her uncertainties, she considered the likelihood that that was all it was – charm, honor, and good humor, subtly comprising a classic case of the halo effect.

Was it at all probable that Livingston was capable of risky skydiving, impeccable deception designed to convince her that he would stay with her until the ambassadors' safety was secured, and even the possession of malice and means necessary to thwart the latter goal?

_Skydiving._ She shuddered. He could've sealed off his apprehension.

Was he just as apt at the physical requirements of a five-hundred-foot parachute deployment? Livingston had been so far down ahead of her that he could've had his parachute out without her distinguishing him from a free falling body, and she hadn't dared look down at all as a first-time diver.

Sabrina checked her digital clock. The shuttle wasn't due for a couple hours. She sat at a bench, her face buried in her hands. What about the lies? One couldn't yet call Livingston a pathological liar, clinically speaking, but as someone with "a way with robots," he could simply have an antisocial disorder. He'd only made a passing remark to Sabrina about the horror of seeing so many people, loved ones included, stricken dead without any warning. Then it was just business as usual.

Plus, there was something that her intuition found unsettling. The emotional mastery, yes, but also a sense of unreality in him. Inhumanity, even.

Whether Livingston was vindictive enough was hazy, but he certainly had everything he needed to pose a serious threat to the _Strange_ space shuttle. Give him a place to stand, and he could move the world with his technological sixth sense. The proof was overwhelming. Livingston could command vehicular bots. He could fool the strictest security bot. He could redirect one Sonicap and lock the weaponry of another. Who was she to say he couldn't destroy a shuttle from the inside, or worse?

She looked to the murky sky and hoped Livingston was dead after all. Another reason to despise herself, and even that was a source of positive sinful feedback. Jesus had said hate was akin to murder, thus this was suicide.

But there was no hacking her genes. She could only hate a person who would wish almost certain hellfire upon any soul. That presumption of his eternal fate was itself spiteful.

She felt like a living paradox.

Her only consolation was that she needn't fret over whether she should stay to protect the shuttle's landing. She saw a burst of light in the dark dome. It came to her that she could determine if Livingston was alive by attempting contact with Luna, but this wasn't necessary to know what that light show was.

There it was again, the complacency of having no choices.

He was alive, but Sabrina still had reason to send out a call to Luna. Unsuccessful. Cut off from society on a planet with only two other humans, she decided to pursue the one who was less likely to send her to an early grave.

She checked the fuel gauge of the hydro-car she'd picked from the nearby parking garage. It would last her to Belarus. There was no telling where Livingston would go next, but she figured the odds that he wouldn't even be aware that the plane she'd take existed were in her favor.

Just how far had his network of robotic slaves extended? He had to actively deceive the androids in Kazakhstan, so perhaps it was safe to act on the assumption that robots in Belarus wouldn't lure her into a fatal trap.

Getting across the Atlantic would be the easy part. It was the prospect of facing the Eastern American robots, which would more likely lie in Livingston's domain, that frightened her. Even if she landed without being blown up by pyromaniacal bots, what chance did she stand against the army he had out West?

How had she not seen the terror of her predicament until just now? Perhaps, she considered on her drive into the belly of the beast, it simply takes the human mind a concrete example of a previously abstract problem to comprehend a radical circumstance like this. Was this what it felt like to be Zolnerowich, when confronted with death on a massive scale?

_At least she's not in the line of fire on Earth._ She took in the wooded scenery with peripheral vision. _Not like Livingston can hijack machinery on the moon._

Sabrina was tired and jet-lagged, but another voice in her told her to be optimistic. Supposing Livingston was alive and heading out on a bounty hunt for Uriah – bonus points if he gets in good standing with the Lunar government for this after blaming Uriah for the _Strange_ disaster – it wasn't certain he wanted _her_ dead. He'd said he wanted to "clean up this mess." That could be code for protecting Earth from the ravages of government, and if such an objective precluded any human migration between Earth and the moon save one woman he saw as, at best, harmless, so be it.

That Livingston had spared her so far was evidence against her paranoid model of the situation. Was it all a ploy to get under her clothes, a mission aborted when he realized she knew too much or was simply unattractive? If so, he must've been quite scatterbrained at the time, alternating between secrecy and remarkable openness.

It was all useless conjecture in the end, and whether she liked it or not, Sabrina's moral duty was to stop Livingston from murdering Uriah. Strange. Having a goal that could get her killed made her feel more alive than she had in years.

She hoped to be in the sky over the western border of contiguous Europe by noon.

CHAPTER 10

Sabrina felt naked without a working weapon on the plane to Boston, as she had tested the EM ring without a visor to no effect. There was simply no way around security if one lacked Livingston's expertise, and what other choice did she have that could match his speed? This might pay off in Livingston's trust later, so she bought the cheapest spot and boarded.

Unlike the last aircraft, this one was full of Dethroned passengers. Psychologically sickening, yes, but upon inspection of the corpses in seats adjacent to hers, Sabrina found no predictable stages of decay eating away at the Organics. There was no smell but that of a typical air-freshened plane's interior, no pale skin everywhere she looked, not a maggot to be found.

She couldn't chalk all this up to the cleanliness of robot stewards who didn't know what to do with fliers overstaying their welcome – not without a response from human resources, upon whose judgment they seemed to rely. It was what they'd all said it was, as if something had snatched these people's souls forever.

Sabrina sat and shut her eyes to this reality, for all the robotic world like someone napping after a long day. Which she was, in a sense: half sleeping, half forgoing any notions of solving this natural mystery in favor of deducing a way to pull her plan off without getting herself killed.

Nothing came. All her distress calls to Luna had died somewhere in transit. She was alone. The world of dreams beckoned to her.

Then, an affable voice. "Excuse me, miss."

"Yes?" She strained her eyelids apart.

Just an android.

"We have arrived at our destination. Would you please gather any luggage you have brought on board and exit the plane?"

America already? And with no trouble? "S-Sure. I'm sorry, how long have you been waiting?"

"Not more than twenty seconds. I apologize if I have disturbed your sleep." _I've had plenty, apparently._ "Have a nice day!"

She departed in a daze. Safe, and all without a prayer passing from her self-centered lips. Talking to God had always been a stumbling block for her, like evolution or the problem of evil was for other believers. It was a wonder she'd made it this far on providence from the Big Guy who was probably shaking his head at her.

That was for more than one reason, as Sabrina hadn't taken fifty steps through the airport before robot authorities accosted her. She gawked at the three burly, siren-emitting humanoids, two of which were drawing small devices, and the third said, "Miss, please relinquish any weapons you may possess before we use force. You are under arrest."

She spread her arms and, as the duo performed their remote search, she asked, "On what charges?"

"Sabotage of the _Strange_ space shuttle landing and consequent manslaughter." The officer rattled off the Miranda rights and grabbed hold of Sabrina's arm after the others rendered her helpless to escape.

Sabrina told herself to be as respectful as possible. No matter how scarcely they were earning it. "This is a misunderstanding, officer. I am an ambassador from Luna, myself. I was sent by request of the colonial government to prevent this very catastrophe."

"Miss Lockhart, please refrain from denial of these allegations until you have read the pertinent documents listing our sources for this claim. You will receive said documents shortly, and rest assured that should you be found innocent, you may appeal for due compensation."

That would never happen, of course. She'd crossed the legal event horizon, never to return to the realm of innocence that its residents take for granted. It was best to make peace with this system lest she lose her head in the next Reign of Terror.

_On the bright side,_ she thought as she entered the cop car, _I have no reputation to lose in the eyes of anyone but Uriah, and if the plan goes right he'll owe me his life anyway._ Bright side or no, she breathed deeply and shut her eyes until she heard a Softsheet emerging from in front of her.

"Said documents" were of no higher logical quality than Livingston's search warrant. Its author, likely the android marionette himself, hadn't even bothered to omit claims that Sabrina would recognize as blatant fabrications, such as that administrators of the _Strange_ mission unanimously testified against her or that she'd displayed evidence of rebellious tendencies strong enough to motivate sabotage.

It was all shallow rationalization of what may as well have been a note card reading, "There are no people on this planet who give two platypus eggs about justice for you, so just let us insult your intelligence and accuse you of a crime that will keep you under Supreme Lord Livingston's thumb."

"My lawyer lives in Luna, officer," she spoke into the car's intercom, because apparently the anti-electromagnetic shield was necessary.

"I am aware of that."

"So how can she defend me in a court that's two hundred thousand miles away from her? I haven't been able to contact the moon at all in the past twelve hours, at least."

"You must possess a defective communicator. As you could infer from the documents outlining the charges against you, BPD has not only succeeded at correspondence with the government and citizens of Luna, but the workers at TLTB have provided testimony cited in those documents. The court will meet as normal, and we shall provide a means by which your attorney can argue the case from her current residence."

How Livingston expected the whole metropolis to swallow this drivel, she hadn't the faintest clue.

"Will you hold me in prison until I go to court?" She already knew the answer, not because this was customary under the modern legal system, but since everything else about the arrest had been ridiculous and presumptuous.

"Yes. In the interim, rehabilitation authorities will require you to attend counseling. There will be no compulsory labor or community service, and, if you so choose, you may spend time outside the penitentiary itself with a robotic escort."

That was reassuring. "Rehabilitation" was a benign word for neurological modification to subvert one's illicit impulses, as was "robotic escort" code for the closest thing to the Thought Police mixed with S.S. Stars of David. The accused would wear striking purple-colored contact lenses, unscientifically named Good Angels, designed to both alert others of her criminal status and indirectly connect her central nervous system to monitor bots at the police department.

Although Good Angels' view of neuron activity could inform the monitor bots' judgments based on the individual's intent and psychology, it was slim comfort for a wearer who was well aware of the invasion of mental privacy this could entail, especially for one in Sabrina's situation without humans to enforce checks on the androids. Hence, most alleged criminals chose traditional physical confinement in exchange for theoretical peace of mind.

Watching the East Boston Penitentiary draw closer, Sabrina couldn't play the Luddite and blame these loopholes of justice on the evils of technology. For who could anticipate that anyone would get screwed over by this system after the vast majority of the population had died? It would be like faulting everyone who'd ever written anything for causing a hostile alien takeover, instigated by the ire of extraterrestrials mistranslating certain words as something highly offensive to their species.

An idea came to her like Archimedes's eureka. "Officer, did you learn of my supposed guilt of this crime from a man named Isaac Livingston?"

"I do not know that name, Miss Lockhart."

"Have you reported any unusual modification of police protocol or information?"

"Everything we do at BPD follows the same heuristics we have held to for years, barring the occasional changes of which we ensure citizens are aware."

So his ploy was to establish a grip on the collective robotic consciousness that the robots themselves couldn't recognize as an outside force. A god was he.

"Are you capable of lying to me, officer? Because I have reason to believe Livingston hacked you and every other BPD android."

"That you are already resorting to such preposterous allegations is indicative of the weakness of your case, Miss Lockhart."

She was far from defeated. "I have evidence. If you would please play the audio recorded on that device you confiscated from me earlier, I can prove that I am innocent and that Isaac Livingston is a more likely suspect." As she said this, it occurred to her that perhaps she had a chance of establishing her inculpability to Luna, at least. Livingston could simply have cut off only their responses to her, considering the speed with which she sent her messages.

Or he could have realized the necessity of severing communication minutes into her atmospheric entry.

"Very well."

They heard as much of it as would last a drive to the police station, uncensored. She didn't get her hopes up too much, but she couldn't help feeling somewhat vindicated as her alibi played in the car. When the automobile stopped, the officer said, "I do not find this convincing, but we will keep it as evidence for court." There you had it: even if Luna were convinced of her blamelessness, it seemed BPD would be aware of this and deny her a fair trial anyway. Like being ruled by a grade school bully.

"Please follow me inside. We will go through the proper procedure and show you your quarters" – more jargon for "bureaucratic measures" and "cell" – "before you choose the living option you prefer." Sabrina stepped out, constantly reminding herself that it was her soul that really mattered. Show time.

* * * *

When Sabrina asked the administrators of rehabilitation what parts of her brain would be altered in "counseling," they gave the first honest-sounding answer she'd heard out of BPD that day.

Historically, Neurehab, as the general public called it, targeted the stimuli of generally aggressive, deceitful, and disobedient action. This was essentially the same treatment as that of problematic children, at least those whose parents had no objection to a form of behavioral therapy that was still controversial, for the rapidly developing brains of kids are intricately nuanced.

Such concern for adults facing Neurehab was rare, not only because there's less danger of a butterfly effect in the mature brains of most criminals, but also due to the persistent lack of concern in the public eye for the well-being of the inmates. Even Sabrina had held a "hang 'em high" view on criminal justice as long as public safety would be in jeopardy if such preventative measures weren't taken. Being a wrongfully incriminated person herself hadn't changed that perspective, as she saw these unfortunate cases as necessary and ethically informed sacrifices for the good of others.

So when Sabrina found that her brain would undergo the same modification as past criminals, she found solace in her memory of testimonials from her predecessors, which reported no ill effects as far as she could recall. Then the first Neurehab session occurred.

"Welcome, Miss Lockhart," said the counselor, gesturing toward a chair.

_They really do treat this like counseling._ She reclined in her seat. "I have to say, I didn't expect Neurehab to be so... casual."

"No one does, which is perfectly understandable. Let me assure you that there is nothing to fear here. There is a lot of propaganda out there that would have you believe we will treat you like an experiment of Doctor Frankenstein's, but in fact a case in which a patient feels psychologically damaged after counseling is quite rare."

The humanoid kept standing, milling about the room as it gathered supplies for the modification. "Miss Lockhart, how many times a day do you find yourself angry?"

"Depends on how you define 'angry.'"

"What I mean is, how often do you speak or act in an irrational manner due to frustration, however severe?"

Time to have the only fun she expected to get in this world. "Never. I'm a purely rational being that always behaves in a way I ideally would, given my beliefs. Even when I'm wrong, my actions are perfect."

"You are not being honest," it said while observing a small wand-like machine, evidently calibrating it.

"What do you mean by that?" She crossed her arms and tried to look smug.

"You are not telling the truth."

"What is truth in a world like this? The problem with consciousness is that it can never look at the universe in a truly objective manner. All is what we perceive it to be based on our senses, which are almost certainly deceiving us in ways one would expect from our programmer."

"Which programmer are you referring to?"

She stared at the ceiling as if her deceptive visual organs were showing her a captivating work of art from it. "Call it the caprice of evolution, call it Poseidon, call it a lavender dragon. Whatever it is, we would be fools to suppose it would grant us the power to discern this so-called 'truth.'"

"That is impressive rhetoric, but it is logically dubious."

"Think that if you will. But I like knowing the truth that the truth is not absolute, especially when that truth is not absolute itself. It's quite liberating. How boring life was when I saw it as a certain axiom that other humans possessed minds I ought to respect by virtue of their similarity to mine! How restrictive it is to believe that two plus two always is, always was, and always will be four, that death is inescapable!" She gave a short laugh, oozing with condescension. "I don't believe in death, you know."

"Why, when there is proof in the remains of so many humans?"

Sabrina gave her eyes the most exaggerated roll possible. "Of course other people die, but why on Earth should that be proof that _I'm_ mortal? I've managed to live this long. The only people who die are those who haven't properly liberated themselves."

By then the robot was ready to start the process, but it seemed concerned enough about Sabrina's words to postpone it. Just what she wanted. "Where did you learn this nonsense?"

She turned to the android. "From Master, of course."

"Who is Master?"

"Master Livingston! You must've heard of him. He taught me all of his wisdom from the time I was a child to when I became a woman." The name was of no significance, but it never hurt to plant a seed she could grow into something useful. "He is the most enlightened man who has ever lived, and he said that anyone who holds to his teachings may one day become wiser than he."

"I do not know Master Livingston. Does he live around here?"

"He doesn't live anywhere for more than a few days."

She redirected her eyes to the ceiling with the air of someone rattling off a Bible verse. "'She who does not build a home for herself, in order to live the immobile life of a mountain, will cause quakes in the minds of her fellows more forceful than those that created the mountains.' That's one of my favorite teachings from Master. Master uses the word 'she' in that saying because he believes wisdom is naturally more prominent in women. That makes his wisdom even more impressive."

"And you believe whatever he believes?"

"How could I not? Master has conquered death. He was the first person to, by freeing himself from absolutism, discover a way of life more wonderful than anything truth could bring. It may not be the best way of life, but it's a lot more peaceful than anything else I've found."

"Would you ever stop believing in Master Livingston's ways?"

"I don't see why I would. If there's no absolute truth, I can't be so certain that something you claim contradicts Master is worth believing if it means giving up his ways."

"What if you found out that there is absolute truth, or that there are ways better than Livingston's?" The robot was holding the wand inches from her skull.

She shoved the robot away and stood up. _"Stop!_ I'm not ready! I need to ponder Master's ways before I subject myself to this treatment!"

"Miss Lockhart, would you please excuse me?" it said as it patiently restrained Sabrina into her seat and walked away.

It worked.

This wasn't a foolproof way of escaping prosecution, not if Livingston was overseeing this process with full knowledge that Sabrina Lockhart wasn't brainwashed. Still, it bought her time as well as distance from mind-altering devices. Now it was simply a matter of either retrieving the EM ring and hacking it, or milking the insanity story enough to convince even Livingston of it. He wouldn't believe that he'd started a cult, but would he think Sabrina had gone mad, perhaps from the solitude and demoralization of her post-Dethroning life?

The counselor reentered the room. "Miss Lockhart, BPD has deemed you currently unfit for neurological rehabilitation. I would like to ask you a few questions first about your religious beliefs."

This time, Sabrina really did find such questions stupid. Spinning her Postmodernist Cliche Response Wheel, she said, "Oh, it's not a religion, my reverence for Master. Religion divides people, but Master brings them together."

"Okay. Just think of these as philosophical questions, if you wish." It took a seat. "Now, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God?"

"No. If he is, he sure has surpassed his father. You might say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he was God." She was fond of that quote for divergent reasons, but she figured the misotheistic implications were obvious here. As soon as this was over she was prepared to vomit in response to the horseradish that had come out of her own mouth.

"Do you talk to any beings you cannot see?"

"If I were blind, I'd be insulted by that. But no, aside from the obvious things like cellphone interlocutors, I hold to Master's principle that spirits are illusory, because spiritual talk is so frequently associated with absolutism. After all, how many monks would admit that it's not certain that fasting is conducive to communion with spirits?"

"Would you be willing to commit murder in order to secure the victim's eternal destiny?"

Well, that came out of left field. "A fundamental virtue of Master's ways is that of nonviolence. Besides, even if I did believe in the use of evil as a means to a greater good, I already told you that I don't think souls exist, in this world or any other. How can there be an 'eternal destiny' without immortal souls?"

"Does the name Zoe mean anything to you, emotionally?"

_Just what game is he playing?_ "I did know one Zoe a few years ago. I didn't like her. Rather full of herself, perhaps even secretly afraid that anything less than arrogance from her would convey weakness to others."

"Have you ever done to a girl named Zoe something you normally would not do, but that you saw as morally imperative in order to fulfill a religious duty?"

_How does he...?_ She kept her poker face. "Must you keep asking absurd questions? I said I have no religion, and I wouldn't use a religion to justify evil."

"I never specified this 'something you normally would not do' as evil."

"It was an educated guess!" She moved in an attempt to repeat her indignant stand. "Please stop wasting my time with this, this – mind pollution!"

Once again, the android left, and this time there was little room for speculation. Livingston had figured out what her "idea" was, no large feat for someone of his deductive capabilities. Just as she got to thinking this was her greatest worry, the robot returned.

"Miss Lockhart, we are ready to administer Neurehab. You will have your tendencies toward religious faith disabled, as per the informed judgment of the Boston judicial and medical authorities."

* * * *

"You cannot be serious!" Sabrina regarded the binds on her with resentment and looked appalled. "This is a gross violation of my rel–" She caught herself. "My freedom of thought."

"We think there is ample evidence to suggest that your beliefs will cause harm to society should you retain them."

It seemed that Livingston must have actually thought this, otherwise why would he seek to deconvert her? "I denied holding such harmful beliefs! How can a philosophy of peace and open-mindedness corrupt civilization?"

"You have lied about your convictions, Miss Lockhart. We know you are a Christian, and a particularly medieval sort of Christian at that. Left to your own devices, people like you would instigate the next Inquisition."

"Even if I'm to believe this tripe, how can you justify changing my core values themselves?"

"If it is any consolation, under your own belief system, your deity would exonerate you for infidelity that is beyond your control."

_Maybe so,_ she thought while the bot reached for the wand, _but he won't excuse you._ "He's wrong."

"Refrain from stalling me, please."

"I'm not stalling, I know something he doesn't! This wasn't the idea!"

It stopped. "Elaborate."

"The idea wasn't about killing in order to send souls to heaven. It's something that he needs to know, and if you alter my brain, he'll never know it."

"What is it?"

"I won't tell you until you release me."

"You are stalling, Miss Lockhart. I can tell. Reveal this 'idea' or Neurehab will proceed as normal."

She took a deep breath. "Okay. The idea was the secret to creating the Singularity." That ought to pique Livingston's interest.

"What is this secret, and how would the destruction of your numinous brain regions destroy this information as well?"

"You have to know the story behind it." Sabrina folded her hands and gave a focused expression. "You're aware of the significance of Zoe, so I won't explain that. All you need to know about her is that she was my... test subject, after I first discovered this secret. I know you wouldn't expect to gain any knowledge about artificial intelligence from religious insight, but I did. It wasn't an 'I want you to build an ark' sort of vision. I suppose you could call it a glimpse of the divine creative process."

"If I understand your view of God correctly, it seems odd that knowing how God creates intelligent creatures could be relevant to the Singularity. That is, an AI more intelligent than its creator, which could be anything but God."

She had to phrase this carefully. "Right, but I'd say the secret is more like the surreality of a being's knowing what it is about its own brain that lets it contemplate that brain in the first place. What my glimpse showed me was a – blueprint – of a system of brain parts, which, if stimulated just so, could produce a creative spark that would make that brain system itself." Sabrina would be proud to say this was the most elaborate web of outright lies she'd ever told.

"You think the proper neural stimulation could produce the invention of the Singularity?"

"I would think a materialist such as he is would be the most open to such a possibility."

The android returned to its toy box of counseling aids. "If that is the case, we possess the tools for such a procedure, just as the device I showed you can cast a pall over certain brain activity."

I hadn't counted on that. "Perhaps I should've clarified that this neuron incitement process is extremely complex, likely beyond the scope of any technology we have now."

"That is a rather convenient problem, and as such I find it difficult to believe your story."

"I expected such skepticism, but this is exactly an obstacle you'd anticipate with your knowledge of how minds work. Remind me just how many neurons are in the average human brain."

"Miss Lockhart, I fail to see how Zoe would be an ideal guinea pig in her afflicted state."

"And now that you've betrayed your connection to Livingston by having knowledge of my past that you couldn't possibly have gained from any other source, I fail to see how you have the right to restrain me," she said with what was nearly a spit in the robot's face. "Let me go, and then we can begin to work on making machines that _can_ execute the plan."

The android stood still, indicating that Livingston was surely pulling its strings. "You are not the one in the position of power here, as long as you remain bound. The burden of proof is yours, and should you fail to shoulder it, I will proceed as if this conversation never happened."

"Just who is it that possesses delicate information that your controller desperately desires? Please let me speak directly to that controller, and I will comply."

"Mister Livingston cannot talk to you right now. He is a busy man."

"Busy doing what?" _Let's see if Therapy Bot drops some dangerous info like it did before._

Sabrina felt something not painful, yet alien and unnerving, before she was left paralyzed for two minutes. It was a waking sleep.

CHAPTER 11

There was no time for Sabrina to gently adjust to the world that no longer looked the same as it had always seemed. When the surgery was over, her counselor granted her free movement and said, "Come with me. Mister Livingston has requested that we escort you on a flight to meet him in Everett, Nevada."

She said nothing, too disoriented to wonder what Livingston's game might be, even if she had an idea who Mister Livingston was. She knew there was something different about her brain, but she couldn't pin it down. All that was real to her was what she could deduce from her current surroundings.

These androids seemed nice enough, but she questioned the one leading her out the building. "What does Mister Livingston want from me?"

"He is responsible for delivering justice to you. Recall that you were accused of sabotaging the _Strange_ landing. Dozens of astronauts died."

That stung, for she could remember her role in that catastrophe. Reminding herself of the image of several men and women in spacesuits, burning up in infernal agony, she crossed her arms over her chest and could only look down, shaking.

Sabrina could see in her memory the image of herself, a blond-haired adolescent woman, affixing explosives to a shuttle, darting her head around in the shadows to check for anyone who might catch her in the act. Neither remorse nor any positive emotion permeated the recollection, only bitterness toward those condescending Unnaturals.

She entered the police car and buried her face in her hands as she sat. Consolation was elusive, and all the while the radio breathed the entrancing gray melodies of other humans' creation. Where had these people gone? She couldn't say.

"Is he going to execute me?"

"Certainly not. We know you will not do something so heinous again after your treatment, and as such killing you would be superfluous. That we are talking right now, with the barrier down" – it nodded to the car's center – "shows that we trust you not to be violent. However, Mister Livingston will require some community service from you."

Treatment. They changed her to make her harmless, but how? Knowing she wasn't likely to repeat her moral blunder was scarcely enough to ease her guilt. Whatever service she'd be asked to perform, Sabrina resolved to do it so well and so thoroughly that she would never again do an evil worthy of such labor. Until then, it was all she could do to keep from killing herself.

* * * *

An expansive cluster of dim clouds covered Everett that evening. It gave a peaceful stillness to the atmosphere that Sabrina found comforting as she followed the robot toward Everett Moon Frontier Institute. Not a single other person was to be found in the streets.

They entered to find an extensive atrium, eighty feet from the front doors, that branched off on either side. A help desk was to the right just as one walked in, but the androids manning it appeared to have been beaten beyond easy repair. Sabrina's escort headed for the elevator.

She heard bustling from the direction of a room at the southwest corner of the fifth floor hall. More disintegrated robots littered the floor, and a drizzle began to obscure the view out of the windows. When they reached the room from which the noise was escaping, the bot said, "This is Mister Livingston's office. Follow me inside."

Not two seconds after the door opened, the sound of an active EM gun and the android's graceless fall prompted Sabrina to step away. A gruff male voice said, "Who's there?"

She dared not move more than was essential.

"I nabbed your robo-friend, now show yourself unless your guts are artificial."

For some seconds no one moved, then she heard the man's feet creeping to the doorway. He stopped right at the threshold, probably listening to distinguish between human breathing and the hum of a robot. Detecting the former, he calmly stepped into Sabrina's view.

She gasped. "I know you! Dennis Uriah – I saw you in a video of the moon-to-earth meeting."

"Nice to know I'm famous after less than a week. Get in here," he said with a suddenly vigilant air. "Here there be robots." He pulled her into the room by the upper arm and locked the door.

"What was that about?" She stepped away, bringing into peripheral view a dead body with gore on its skull, which she made her strongest effort to pretend was a figment of her imagination.

"Sorry, just trying to robot-proof you. I broke all the ones I could find in here, but ya never know when a snoopy 'droid will drop in to screw you over." He led her to the desk, gestured to a chair, and sat opposite her.

"I don't understand. That robot wasn't trying to harm you."

He almost laughed. "You haven't been in Everett very long, have you?"

"No, I haven't, and as long as I've been here no android has assaulted me."

"Yeah, well, I've been attacked by enough bots in the past few days to last a lifetime, and they've revolved around this area." Uriah bit his lip and studied her. "That's odd that none of 'em jumped you on your way here. Did this robot say it was taking you to Isaac Livingston?"

"Of course, this is his office," she said with a shrug. "Where is he, anyway?" An unpleasant answer lingered in the back of her mind, but she kept it there.

His mouth hung open for a moment. "You're not... Sabrina Lockhart?"

Sabrina nodded. "How'd you know that?"

Uriah looked down at the desk. "They sent you here to me, didn't they? Zolnerowich and her cronies? And I suppose Livingston got a hold of ya after ya landed."

"I don't know about that last part," she said, feeling as awkward as he seemed, "but yeah, I was sent as an ambassador from Luna to terminate an android named Jane. Along the way I did some things that, well, I'm not proud of."

They heard a thud on the door.

"Dammit, forgot!" Uriah lunged from his seat, picking up a metal stick that looked like a makeshift spear. He threw open the door and hurled the spear into the reanimated robot's heart. Breathing heavily, his eyes darted to the floor. There was a stunner, which had just missed him. For good measure, he punctured the bot's body a few more times, opened the rain-spattered window, and tossed the robotic remains down five stories.

"Are you gonna explain yourself or are you just –"

"I'll get to that!" Uriah snapped. "But right now, we need to do more than skedaddle because I'll bet my gun that bot's got reinforcements." He grabbed his ante, filled and put on his backpack, and motioned for Sabrina to follow him through the door. "Good thing this mess happened so soon. I know a place where they'll never find us."

As they descended the stairs, on Uriah's insistence on this path rather than an elevator, Sabrina lost her patience. "Mister Uriah, I'm not leaving this building until you give me a reason to think those robots want to kill us."

He stopped short, turned around, and pulled up his pant leg, revealing a prosthetic. "That's not flesh and bone, Lockhart, and I sure wouldn'ta had to've gotten this if it weren't for that rat Livingston. He used bombs to try to kill me, and he's proven he isn't above using robots for the same purpose. Ya know _Strange_? Psychopath blew it up along with all your friends from Luna."

She gave a pained look, to which Uriah replied with one of concern. "Something I said?"

"You're wrong," she said through the harbingers of tears. "I-I did that, I'm as sorry as I could possibly be and I'll never do something like that again!"

Sabrina could tell he was pitying her, and for some reason that caused something contemptuous to well up inside her.

He sighed. "Sabrina, we don't have time to sort out all this B.S. Just trust me. If I were lying, why would I stab that android back there that was trying to break into the office? It could've helped me."

"Not buying it. If you wanna save time so much, then give me the gun or go by yourself."

Uriah froze, sizing her up. He lifted the weapon from its holster. "Only if it's mine again once we get where we're going."

She nodded, caught the gun as he tossed it, and returned to her run outside the institute. Power. Now that complying with the law wasn't an option, it felt good, secure, to have this.

Evidently the refuge was close enough – or his paranoia was so profound – that Uriah saw no need to use an automobile, as they kept dashing through the rain without a word. In about five minutes they emerged from a path that had thick woods on either side, into a modest village. No technology stained its naturality, as far as she could tell through the veil of precipitation.

Uriah led her into the nearest house, a blanched building with a small hole in its brown roof and, imprinting itself into her memory forever, a plate of folk art resting on a porch seat. The plate depicted a long-haired Palestinian man in a robe of purest white, showing an eighteenth-century American child a stunning flower that also happened to be the nearest to the ground, yet its petals directed themselves toward the sunny sky.

A thought came with that indelible mark on Sabrina's mind, but before she could contemplate it much she sat across from Uriah in the humble yet utilitarian furniture. They seized blankets to dry and warm their soaked bodies, and after fetching a pot with which to catch raindrops falling through the missing shingles, Uriah offered to stoke a fire in the living room hearth. It was an amenity Sabrina hadn't possessed in her home for over half her life, adding to the soothing effect.

"Even as an Organic I'd always been tolerantly indifferent to the Amish," said Uriah as he collapsed onto the sofa, "but if they're in heaven after all, I hope they hear my message of thanks, now. But down here, I guess we both have some 'splaining to do."

"Do you mind going first?"

"After you honor a certain promise."

She didn't move for a while, looking at that source of power. On the one hand, it wasn't like he had any more reason to shoot her here than back at the EMFI, but on the other, maybe he was just using her as a well of info, disposable at his leisure.

"Sabrina, you owe me this courtesy, especially considering I trusted you with that so willingly."

"Why should I compromise my safety to pay for your gullibility?" She knew this wasn't just about the cold balance of leverage that happened to be in her favor, but it also wasn't just about guarding the feelings of a stranger.

"Because even if there were any safety to compromise, you need me. You love the moon so much, well guess what, they're not letting you back up there without some useful leads on this human possum game. Which I can uniquely provide. If this is gonna turn into paranoia poker, I'll either walk or lie to ya because you wouldn't deserve the truth out of me."

Sabrina frowned slightly and cradled the gun in her hands. Uriah was right. He'd given her about as much cause for suspicion as a police officer, and more fundamentally, which life would at least be worth living compared to the hell of her mind as it currently was? One in which she tortured him in vain for information until he stole the gun anyway, or one that offered the self-respect that came with serving a duty to her fellow humans? The rewards simply piled up too strongly on one side to yield to the weight of the minuscule risks.

Taking the firearm Sabrina held out, Uriah said, "Well, you know who I am and why Luna's designated me public enemy number two, so that's a good start. Number one is that Jane bot ya mentioned. I have a history with her, but let me start from the day all these deaths happened."

"Deaths?"

"Uh, yeah, the reason we're running away from Livingston's 'droids instead of just starting a human revolt against them." Uriah squinted, the corner of his mouth turned up slightly and his head just a tad rotated. "You mean to tell me ya haven't noticed there are billions of people dead on this planet?"

She took a moment. "I didn't see any other people here at all until just now. Since when do humans live on Earth anymore?"

He gave her a look that said, _This is gonna be a lot harder than I thought._ "Ya know what, I think I should get us something to drink before we go any further. Maybe these were the kinds of Amish folks who used kerosene-fueled fridges."

It turned out they had been, and though it was April, he picked hot cocoa "for the one slice of fun we'll have for a long time," as he told Sabrina. He blew on his mug and began, "Sabrina, I think I have an idea what's going on. He changed your brain. Livingston, I mean. That's what made him one terrifying bastard, pardon my French."

"You think Mister Livingston had, well, less than innocent intentions when he had me go to Everett?"

"As innocent as Charles Manson's."

Sabrina glared. What did this random guy know? Trying to protect her was one thing, but insinuating that she was brainwashed and delusional?

Uriah seemed to notice this as he hesitated. "Will you judge me if I say something I normally wouldn't tell a total stranger?"

"I told you what I did to _Strange_ , didn't I?" Not that she had no regrets about that. It had just happened.

He took a gulp of chocolate before setting the mug down on the table between them. "Sure, but that's a lie planted in your mind by Livingston. Mine's real, and even though I don't regret it, there are lot of things people take pride in secretly that others would ostracize them for. Ya see, before all this, and I'll get to that in a mo', I knew a woman I loved to death. Name was Pat. She told me one day that –"

Again he was reluctant to speak, but this time it seemed to pain him to say this. He spat the name: "That Isaac 'Unnatural Bigot' Livingston assaulted her. Ah, screw it, 'assault' is too wishy-washy a word. He raped her. Used her." He kept his eyes on the table. "You at least know about Organics and Unnaturals, right?"

"Yes."

"You must not hate Unnaturals as much as I do, 'cause if ya did, Livingston would've wiped that out of your mind, too. Fair enough, some just don't know what they do."

Sabrina, in her curiosity, figured she might as well see how elaborate his nonsense could get. After taking a sip, using the blanket as gloves, she said, "They can't all be sick pervs, can they?"

"Probably not, but back before Thursday, ya'd swear it was the heyday of the KKK, only these hacks don't hate me for my skin color. They hate me, and presumably you, too, because we have skin at all. And in recent years, a lot of them committed violent hate crimes."

"Must've only been on Earth."

"Of course, there's no one to hate up on the moon, is there? 'Cept you."

How convenient. His say-so wasn't convincing enough, but whether he was lying to her on this particular point wasn't of sufficient concern for her to press further.

A fork of lightning shone outside, bringing thunder as Uriah spoke. "Anyway, on Thursday night, I'd just about had it with these people, and knowing Livingston had treated Pat like a – well, I would say a robot, but after meeting Jane I really couldn't insult her like that. So uh, after that, I just broke into his house, followed him to his basement, and shot him from the top of the stairs with one of these babies." He drew the EM gun. "It's harmless to Organics, don't worry."

"I'm not that out of it."

She must have injected that statement with more bitterness than usual, as Uriah said, "You know, I don't like this anymore than you do, so sorry if I sound like I'm spelling this out. It'll make sense in a minute. So when I got out of the house I ran away and found a place to sleep. When I woke up, every human I saw was just... dead. It was like nothing I'd seen. No one on Luna could explain it."

"So after all that, you just found the woman you were trying to protect dead? All for nothing?" She set the cup down and, the cold of the night immaterial, reached out her hand to touch his.

He seemed to feel both surprised that Sabrina hadn't smacked him and equally sorry for her, and that only added to her self-loathing at this moment of weakness. She retracted her hand with a jerk. "The worst thing is, she missed a perfect opportunity for the both of us to just get away from it all. Don't think badly of me for this, Sabrina, but, well, how should I put this? Have ya ever wanted to live the way you've dreamed of, in a world without other people except for the ones ya love?"

"Of course I have" – at this Uriah blinked – "but I hope you don't intend to kill me to live that kind of life."

"Nah." He waved his hand as if hers were a frivolous question, expounding before she could ask what that former gesture was about. "For one thing, Pat's gone, and this soon after her death I just can't see a way to be happy in this world without her. Killing you wouldn't make a difference."

A chill ran down her spine.

"And besides, even though I've only known ya for less than an hour, I couldn't get rid of you if I had it in me. Probably any human except Livingston or that witch Zolnerowich would be welcome at this point, but you don't seem like the kind of lady who'd put this planet back in its old piss pool if ya had enough power."

"Well, I could die in peace knowing someone's said that about me," said Sabrina, though she crossed her arms regardless.

He smirked briefly. "I guess I could best put it this way. Ever read _The Brothers Karamazov_?"

She nodded, returning a smile in spite of herself. "I'd lived in a Russian community for the past thirteen years." Uriah opened his mouth before quickly closing it. "It's still a classic."

"I forgot which character it was that said something to the effect of, 'The more I love humanity, the less able I am to love individual people themselves, and vice versa.' Someone Father Zossima knew, if memory serves."

He looked at the fireplace, keeping his eyes on its embers for a while. "I wonder if every character in that novel would've felt that way if Dostoevsky had written it in this century. Now that I don't have Pat to love, the world might not seem so despicable."

What on Earth could _that_ mean?

"But let me finish the story. I tried to fill the void by giving myself lives to save. They weren't human lives, and I've never even been much of an animal rights guy, but it didn't seem right to leave them to suffer for a human's mistake." He looked away and winced for a moment.

Probably not the best idea to open up old wounds. "So did you save them?"

"Nope. On my way I stopped in a ghost town, Goodsprings, looking for some robots to help me get the food these animals needed, but these bots were locked. I got outta there, and a bomb went off behind me."

"Is that what blew your leg off?"

He shook his head. "I never lost my leg, it just got broken. The store with the supplies I needed also had a bomb. It didn't blow me up, but the building wasn't so lucky. Crushed me with it, and under there are some bizarro rooms with animal-like robot schematics in them." Uriah stopped talking, perhaps considering what he'd just said.

He continued, "I sent an SOS, and Jane found it. We looked for a robo-doctor, but all the robots around the area were gone."

"It's like the humans now."

"Yeah, Livingston's responsible for both, but for different reasons. I dunno why he had the decency to move the bodies out of the streets and buildings, but as I found out on my way back to Aberdeen – not far from here, that's where I shot Livingston – he rounded up the 'droids because he could. Because he thought they could help him keep me down."

Startled by another violent lightning flash, he glanced outside before saying, "Saturday morning, after I'd boarded a Mag-Lev, I woke up in a saloon in Goodsprings, with this fake leg and some changes in my spine, too. Don't ask how it withstood the bomb, maybe Livingston went out of his way to have the bots rebuild it just to fuck with me. But long story short, he tried to convince me everything I'd experienced in the past two days, including killing him, was 'virtual reality.'" _Gee, like you're trying to convince me everything I know is a lie?_ "And he tried to drug me up in more ways than one on some janky machine that really was virtual reality."

"I'm sorry, this is too weird. You say this guy came back from the dead?"

Uriah shrugged. "Not necessarily. Maybe I just misfired. But I wouldn't say that was impossible, not for this sonuvabitch. Livingston wasn't like other Unnaturals, Sabrina. They have mechanical bodies, sure, but I swear his mind itself was a robot's. He could order around bots, and when he had them replace my spinal nerves with a machine, he could make me do things I didn't want to do. I was just another robot for his ends, 'til Jane saved my ass again."

He stared off to the side at nothing in particular, looking almost ready to punch something. Half of her found this to be a clear red flag, the other was... she couldn't admit it even to herself. "I tell ya, I'd like to repay her for all this, even if I don't know why someone else's robotic girlfriend would help me. But then she decided to do what led you here in the first place."

Sabrina nodded again slowly, eyes wider with understanding. Now it was all coming full circle, almost believably so. "So you and Jane had a discussion with Governess Zolnerowich – if it helps, I'm not fond of her, either – and Jane started to get angry with her. She ran off to stop _Strange_."

"Pretty much, although if you'd been there you'd know Jane was in the right before that lapse in judgment. She was kinder than most humans I've known, but the 'Wich thought she was dangerous. Ooh, _scary_ robots! They're too smart for their own good!"

"Mm-hmm. I didn't intend to harm Jane at all, just to keep her from, y'know..." What was wrong with her, coming this close to spilling the beans even more? She tensed up, nearly slamming her mug down.

Uriah's eyes narrowed again. "That's where I need you to fill in some blanks. Let's start with this: Who the hell are you?"

She sat straighter, just about ready to call him out, but something was holding her back. "Sabrina Lockhart, who else?"

"Well, as far as Zolnerowich told me, you fought for the freedom to migrate to the moon without getting a Libertas brain transplant first. That happened thirteen years ago, but you don't look a day over fifteen."

Not the most tasteful way he could get this information, but a part of her couldn't blame him given the context. "Oh, that. I guess I can't blame you for being confused, but you see, living on the moon has certain, um, side effects. Mentally, I like to think I'm as mature as any other twenty-five-year-old, and I hate it when people forget that. But the moon's gravity is about a sixth of that of Earth, so considering the effects gravity can have on metabolism and aging, you do the math."

"That's real?"

"As real as anything else going on lately."

"Fair point." The storm was dying down, and they'd cast aside the blankets for lack of necessity. Sabrina could tell Uriah felt awkward about what she'd just told him, and as much to her benefit as his, he changed the subject.

"It's more than that I don't get about you, though. You say ya caused the _Strange_ explosion, but I'm pretty sure Livingston did it, maybe Jane. Even if ya seemed like the kind of person who'd blow up a bunch of astronauts trying to save their community, which happened to be yours until now, why would you come here in the first place if you intended to block the other ambassadors?"

_The liar._ "First you tell me why I should believe a single word you've said to me." Before she could stop herself, she stood up and thrust her hands onto the coffee table, towering over him.

Uriah closed his eyes for a moment, folded his arms, and took a deep breath. "That's a tad complicated. Let's talk about it over dinner. Just please hear my full story before ya throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I can help you, even if you don't believe me."

As he got up and strode to the kitchen, which, Sabrina could see from her seat, had more Jesus plates and other such Amish crafts, she soon realized what the problem was. She was infatuated with Dennis Uriah.

* * * *

Sabrina laughed when Uriah told her he set out to become immortal after parting ways with Jane, as if she needed more reasons to question his sanity.

"What are the odds you'll figure this out before you kill Livingston again?"

"Zero," he said before lifting a spoonful of soup into his mouth. "Because I already killed him a second time."

"Come on. He has a world of robots at his disposal, what are _you_ up against that?"

Uriah's affronted ego was showing. Good, anything to minimize this handicap of hers. "I'll have you know it's remarkably easy for me. An EM gun didn't keep him down for long, but this time I put a physical bullet in his brain. Repeatedly. I used that spear I left back in Everett for good measure."

"And this stopped the bots from getting you?"

"Hardly. That's why we're hiding in this house."

She sighed with exasperation. "That much was obvious, but then how did you survive up to this point at all?"

"Let me explain how I re-encountered Livingston first. Now, I might've been poor for the past few years, but I'm no dope. I know that if you're betting on what's gonna make humans live forever, your money's best off on nanotechnology."

"Not if you wanna keep out of jail. You know how many times I've heard of people ticked off at their countries' governments' regulating the making of nanobots? It's like marijuana to the _n_ th degree."

"What choice did they have?" Uriah stole a glance at the moonlight. "Tiny machines can be as deadly as massive ones, if not more so 'cause we can't see 'em. But they can also be manna for our species. Think about what causes death. There are a lot of indirect killers, but it all boils down to the body's inability to keep metabolism going. Not enough energy or oxygen – starvation, asphyxiation, massive blood loss. Nutrient deficiency and dying cells – cancer, a helluva lot of other diseases. You get the idea."

"And nanobots can prevent all that. We could alter our bodies to get our energy from sources besides food, and to speed up tissue repair, and nab tumors while they're young." So he was onto something, but it was a rather shaky plan when the quality of nanotech was about as reliable as that of narcotics. "Most of what kills us the Unnaturals don't have to worry about, anyway."

Uriah scoffed. "A lot of them are the ones I'd rather have dead."

"You really think that?" Maybe these reasons to hate him weren't helping. In the moment, this perverse attraction wasn't getting any weaker – it just seemed to fight her rational mind relentlessly.

"You said it yourself. That you've fantasized about a world without any people who just got in your way."

She shrank away extremely slightly, but lifted her chin to compensate. "That was just a thought, I mean, I don't seriously wish people's deaths!"

"Thinking it is always half the battle. But more to the point, get off your moral high horse." Her eyes widened, and he continued quickly. "I've never believed that all lives are worth living, or preserving. And I don't think that makes me a bad person, because ya know what? Some lives harm others more than they help. Even than they help _themselves_. You give me one good reason to think I should've let Livingston go on his merry way, raping people and sucking the life out of everyone who doesn't fit into his dignified little class of 'next-generation humans.'"

"Maybe not Livingston, but for these other Unnaturals, riddle me this: What if they see your life in _exactly the same way_?"

That shut him up. What the hell was wrong with her, having a soft spot for someone this deficient in empathy? "Look, arguing about this isn't the most productive thing we could be doing, not when we need any reason we can find to have each other's back. So. You were saying?"

Uriah stayed silent for a couple seconds, then breathed deeply. "Right, well, a robotic body is death's nightmare. The vulnerable human brain that wears out faster than it can replicate its cells, much less keep the right connections going? Not so much. And even though what ya see in the public techno-square would have ya believe there's nothing out there that can immortalize even the brain, I know better."

"Do you, now?"

"Sure, thanks for asking. It's as likely as that thousands of people will find ways to get drunk in a state under prohibition laws. The regs are almost totally ineffectual, especially since the people who'll make nanobots for evil purposes aren't gonna do it under the watchful eye of the public scientific community. But the public and, hence, the legislatures are willing to push for these laws out of, let's call it... fear of a silicon planet."

"Just how will you find these underground mad scientists?"

"Already have."

Uriah was about to explain, but Sabrina caught on. "Livingston?"

"Bingo."

"So that's how he –"

Uriah nodded. He pushed aside his empty bowl. "I think so. See, until I shot him today, I hadn't supposed he might be a nanotech enthusiast."

"Just a crazy?" She finished soon after him, but neither was concerned enough with mundane matters by this point to clean up dishes.

"Pretty much. A crazy with a lot of power, which is a dangerous combination. The scariest thing is he really hasn't lost it."

He'd just called Livingston crazy, so Sabrina assumed he meant his power, not his mind. "Spare me the metaphorical claptrap. Dead people are powerless."

"I meant his robotic subjects are still under his control."

"Okay, so besides the obvious question of how that makes sense, how'd you get away from these robots if they're still bounty hunting you?"

"I am the most dangerous game, dear Rainsford. I did what I've been doing since Livingston died – sending the drones to android hell. This was on my way to Everett, not to find Livingston, but Marshall Patterson."

Sabrina just stared, prompting him to explicate. "Jane's creator, who worked at the EMFI. This was a man who made a human replica convincing enough to be his own girlfriend. If anyone could cheat death with technology, it was Marshall. Livingston had a damn near seductive grasp on robots, but I didn't see any reason to think he was actually tech savvy or inventive."

"You thought he'd just keep his nanobot blueprints stowed away in his office?"

"Nah, but if ya know what to look for, secretive work leaves traces, especially in overt work." He leaned back, hands behind his head. "I'm not gonna pretend I always do what makes sense, Sabrina. Maybe searching for immortality where it'll most likely show itself makes more sense than anything in the world, but even if it doesn't, that's what led me to where Livingston was hiding, ready to catch you in his spiderweb."

Sabrina's face reddened. The words "damsel in distress" had always been nails on a chalkboard to her. "So you just took a handgun and blew his brains out as soon as you saw him?"

"I figured it couldn't hurt to bring preemptive arms if, worst case scenario, he could make me choke myself to death with another brain-bug anyway. It really was a fluke, but I'll always have a chance to show my inner Superman as long as the drones are still around."

"Okay, you know what? This is beyond madness. I am _not_ the gullible little kid you think I am, so your story had better start making some sense or, or..."

"Or what? No offense, lady, but you're not much more powerful than a corpse yourself."

"Or I'm out of here." He gave a blank stare, at which she added, "You see, Uriah, I'm not gonna stoop that level. Of violence. I don't need to threaten you, but I do know you're going to absolutely crash and burn without me."

Uriah snorted. "This is some kind of joke, right?"

"You're insane, which is exactly why if I leave, you're just gonna find that all the years of endless life won't mean a thing if you can't replace this Pat skank."

He pointed his finger with a scathing look, very nearly poking her eye out. "Petty insults aren't much better, y'know."

"My point exactly." She grinned. "You're miserable without her. Oh, sure, you put on that bravado like you couldn't care less about other people, but I can tell you need companionship. Trust me. All I need is a reason to trust you."

Uriah eyed her with what seemed like a strange mix of curiosity and admiration. "I dunno whether to think you're the crazy one or that ya just might be onto something. I'll bite." He reached for his holster. "Take the gun."

Her eyebrows shot up about an inch. This wasn't just a necessary sacrifice to get her to come to the Amish house. He was actively _giving_ her the gun. "Are you serious? I – I'm sorry I doubted –"

"No, I need to show you I'm not bluffing." There it was. She would never have thought a weapon could mean what it did now. He pushed it over, and after Sabrina looked up to see him nod, she took it in her hands.

She wanted to ask more, but he appeared tired of talking about this matter, or about anything at all. "Dennis, maybe you should get some rest. You've probably been tiptoeing on eggshells for a few dozen hours with those robots out there."

He seemed to appreciate the concern, but he sighed and said, "That's why I don't want to sleep. It's stupid. It would leave me – us – at their mercy."

"Not in this neighborhood."

"They don't operate on the human circadian rhythm, Sabrina." Uriah took the dishes for her, and but for her captivation the gesture would've lost its effect when he had no reason to wash them in a temporary home. "Eight hours is plenty of time for them to find us."

_Okay, time to see if he appreciates a tough girl. Not that I should care._ "What if I stand guard? I got some sleep on the plane, and I can work an EM gun well enough."

"No, you shouldn't hafta do that for me," he said with a yawn that she hoped wasn't of boredom. "It's not safe."

"That doesn't work on me, big guy." She stood and put her hands on her hips. "I went through training for Sonicap spaceflight, so I think I can handle this."

Uriah paused, grimacing a bit. "All right, you keep an eye out for bots. But you'll need a few toys of mine." He headed for the living room, unzipping his backpack. She followed him, surprised at his sudden willingness.

"First, caffeine." He handed her a teal soda can. "Don't worry, this stuff is totally risk-free. No addiction or carcinogens, but it'll keep ya from snoozing involuntarily." He removed an ordinary-looking belt from his pants, handing it to her. "I ganked this from the EMFI. Handy little gadget, all ya gotta do is put it on and it'll give you a subtle buzz in the right direction when it picks up signals you'd expect any robots approaching to send each other."

"This is great! We'll both be safer."

He maintained his serious expression. "Blast 'em right away, focus on the EM pulses first 'cause they're less concentrated than a gunshot, and – that reminds me –" He gave her the electromagnetic blaster. "So there isn't a repeat of the last time a robot looked at us funny. You should be able to tell where a bot is after you EM nuke it, so a gun works best for finishing the job at long distance."

Exhausted as his face showed him to be, Uriah put his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. "Lastly, please, if anything goes wrong, wake me up. Don't be a hero."

She pushed his hands away, adopting a more confident posture. "I'll be fine, Dennis. And I'd like not to be ordered around, as I'm your equal despite my appearance."

"Sure." He smiled ever so slightly before walking upstairs. "Good night."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean at a time like this?"

* * * *

Locked.

Against Uriah's wishes, Sabrina had promised herself not to bother him unless she was sure he would die if she didn't do so. An inescapable house didn't guarantee swift doom to its inhabitants, so she kept her cool. As much cool as it was possible to have after finding out she was trapped, anyway.

Besides, she knew she needed this time to sort out the mess that was her mind. And her hormones.

For her predicament was bred of anything but love, she knew that. If her sexual orientation was as inflexible as it had always been, this wasn't even quite a physical allurement either, she realized as she sat at the chair she'd positioned before an immovable window. As far as she could see, there were no humanoid machines around the house, as if what androids were in the village had sealed the exits with... _nanobots_.

He'd only been asleep little more than half an hour by now. Sabrina tried to put into focus what it was about this somewhat crude-mannered man that was enticing – not a small task, as this did not cohere with her identity itself.

She closed her eyes and found herself back in fifth grade, at a wildlife sanctuary with her peers on a field trip. None of the adults were nearby, and she and some friends were observing a group of flamingos milling about a simulated swamp.

While the others were showing placid interest in the birds, Jenny seemed to be thinking about something. Sabrina sneaked up behind her and snapped her fingers right by Jenny's ears.

She swore Jenny jumped at least two inches off the ground. "Sabrina, you –"

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" She stepped in front of her friend. "If I could pull that off, it must be important."

"Ah, it's nothing." Jenny stifled a laugh.

"That's a funny 'nothing.' Now what was it, really?"

"Okay, well... it's kinda silly, just that... you know Oswald's flamingo?"

"Yeah, Ken."

"That's him. Oz told me that Ken tried to have babies with his friend's flamingo."

"Tried to?"

Another giggle. "Yep, but the other flamingo was a boy."

Like clockwork, a shorter girl a few feet away who'd been eavesdropping piped up, "Aren't you like that, too, Sabrina?"

"Whaddya mean?"

Jenny said, "You like girls."

"My mom says people like that go to hell," said the vertically challenged kid.

Sabrina suddenly kissed her. "There, now you'll go there, too. Have fun."

Being "like that" had, as far as she could remember, not been anything but a mildly proud reality for her, like her left-handedness. Now, it appeared she was more like that flamingo than she'd known, for she had learned later that exclusive homosexuality was rare in nonhuman animals.

But the difficulty wasn't so much the revelation that she was perhaps closer to the middle of the Kinsey scale than she'd thought, but that she knew this would complicate her already delicate circumstance of holding responsibility for the propagation of the human species – she hadn't forgotten _that_ in the mental turbulence of recent days.

Though her confinement left her little reason to keep watch, Sabrina resisted the temptation to curl up under the warm blanket just a few feet from her.

She wondered if she wasn't simply rationalizing, with a shift in "preferences," what was in fact an attempt to sell her body for the world. Maybe she was deluding herself into desiring Uriah only because the notion of mothering a pivotal generation in human history with a man she was, at best, benignly indifferent to was unpleasant.

This felt so artificial, like there was something seriously wrong with her. She was losing herself.

Sabrina remembered well her stand for her reproductive liberty in the face of Zolnerowich, but now, having gotten past the self-pity that had come with her father's perishing, it wasn't so easy to rip apart humanity's ticket to posterity. Supposing they would find a way out of the house at all, she also doubted her possible children's chances of surviving to maturity, and what then? Indoctrinate them into thinking it was mandatory to have kids?

It hardly helped her reluctance to get romantic with this man, who would likely not return the favor, that she had to admit his pursuit of everlasting life wasn't frivolous. Indeed, it was the only sane way to sustain a race endangered by the slavish ambitions of its creations. This was his appeal – his capability, clear view of his world, and confident pursuit of a dream even when staring down a planet filled with more cold hostility than anything humanity had faced yet.

She tried to open all the doors and windows the ground story of the house featured, but there was no mistaking that she was trapped in here with Uriah.

The couch called to her, in all its warm, deep blue, velvety glory.

Sabrina noticed that he'd left his pack on it, and she would've left it alone if the belt he'd given her had not buzzed just as something dinged inside the pack. As it was, she glanced toward the bedroom door before diving in.

The high note had come from his multipurpose communicator. A symbol on its screen indicated the presence of a newly received video feed. _Why would a robot...?_

She couldn't be certain an android had sent it, as the unhelpful source listed was "HS5300714," but that was of little consequence. Reassured by the communicator's automatic virus scan, which found no threat, she played the video at minimal volume.

The first clip showed a group of androids huddled inside a wrecked building, some of which were repairing it, the rest tending to an unconscious man that could only be Dennis Uriah. One robot was carrying out a human-voiced monologue, the most interesting phrase of which referred to "our little genocidal fella who shot more than he thought."

Which struck her as the pinnacle of absurdity until she saw another clip. Uriah and a feminine bot she recognized as Jane were descending some stairs. "Told ya he was out of his mind, Jane," he said. "There's my alibi."

Sabrina saw the object that had cast doubt on his statement just as soon as he did. The "camera" followed Uriah along the line of fire, bouncing off the EM reflector, to the enigmatic hemisphere.

It came to her with the suddenness of creative inspiration, but with more of a negative effect on her stomach than any Renaissance man's insight.

"... who shot more than he thought."

"There's my alibi."

"When I woke up, every human I saw was just... dead."

"At least, not morally capable."

Sabrina Lockhart just might have gotten herself locked in a house with a mass murderer.

### INTERLUDE

### ZUGZWANG

" _Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion."_

– _Aristotle_
CHAPTER 12

Staring at Jane's palm aimed at his head, Livingston was genuinely afraid.

He'd known Jane was an android to be reckoned with from the start, as it was invulnerable to his control. It had also brought his plane down, though that was due in part to Sabrina's stupidity.

But for this mechanical whore to have cornered him at gunpoint after making his visor malfunction, that was the last straw. Jane was an imbecile, he knew that much. Thus it must have had robotic accomplices, surely abundant on the other plane.

He had to get rid of a bot that emotionally unstable and incompetent, but not through terror. Jane was useful, and if he could convince it he was a friend, he could milk it for all it was worth.

Still breathing heavily after having pulled off a risky landing where Sabrina couldn't see him, Livingston kept his finger discreetly hovering a millimeter away from the EM ring. No need for Jane to know he was armed just yet. "This can be easier than we're making it, Jane. We each have something the other wants. I can give you what you need to have Marshall back."

"How do you know who Marshall is?"

"I used to work with him. Brilliant fellow, very interested in emotional AI, but he didn't have a lady-friend. You two came from the same area, so I assumed." As the robot relaxed its stance a bit, Livingston slowly stood up. "Nothing can satisfy a robot of your design except the company of its designer, and of course he's as dead as anybody else besides me and your, er, friend."

"Uriah's not my friend." Jane shoved him back to the ground and kept its palm inches from his face. "Now what do you want from me?"

"Two things. First, in the time between now and when Marshall is alive again, you can do for me what ya did for him." Jane bit its lip and narrowed its eyes, which Livingston ignored. "Second, there's a certain... experiment I need ya to help me with."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, remember that machine in Goodsprings? It's called a Mindscape. I think it just might work on robots as much as on humans."

"Didn't Uriah really enjoy being hooked up to that thing? If anything, you'd be helping me."

"Right! You get to be with Marshall again and have the time of your life in the Mindscape, and I get a willing test subject for my experiment."

Jane kicked him back so that he was lying flat on his back, her foot planted on his neck. "And my body. I don't think Marshall would like that."

"Like I said, we'll stop when Marshall is back. He won't know a thing about what we've done together. No harm done."

"That's cheating. Marshall said he didn't hate anything more than a cheater, so that's why he made me."

"I see. That's okay, we can forget that condition. After all, we'll still be even considering you could kill me right now if ya wanted to." He removed the ring, threw it on the ground, and crushed it with his foot, returning to his upright stature as he did so.

Jane, wide-eyed, did not protest. "You put a lot of trust in me. Most people think I'm evil because I'm a robot."

"Robots are easier to trust than humans, Jane." Except this one, because it was too much like humans. Idiotic humans, as far as he was concerned. "That's why I'm stacking the deck in your favor."

"But... couldn't you just as easily take control of me like you did with those other robots?"

"Maybe I could." _No, I couldn't._ "But I'm feeling generous today. If I wanted to make you a slave for the experiment, I would've done so. There's nothing I could gain from this except your companionship. Not friendship," he added when Jane shifted a tad and grasped her arm with the other one. "I know, I know, Marshall can be your only friend. I know robots."

Jane looked down but kept targeting Livingston. Without making eye contact, the android said, "You lied to me before, Isaac. You caused those explosions in Nevada, and you told Uriah lies about him imagining all those deaths."

"Oh, the ones I told Uriah, those were necessary," he said with a light wave of a hand. "You know as well as I do that he's responsible for the deaths. For _Marshall's_ death."

His gaze drew in Jane's.

"He's as distrustful a guy as he is untrustworthy. There's no persuading someone like that to come quietly, and he lied just as much to me. I'm a lot of things, Jane, but I'm no rapist with a taste for bombs. So no, I didn't deceive you."

"But you said a robot a lot like one of Uriah's planted the bombs. That doesn't make sense."

"It was a guess. Probably not the same robot you're thinking of. This is all trivial, though, because if you don't think my intentions are good by this point, I don't know how else I can prove that to ya." He gave an open-ended shrug and looked up to the sky where he was expecting visitors. "Your choice: me, or the man who caused the apocalypse."

"Well, how do I know you really can bring Marshall back?"

"The same way I brought myself back." Livingston reached out his hand and grasped Jane's with enough confidence to impress, yet not so abruptly as to startle it. "Uriah won't win, Jane. He can put humanity to sleep for a while, but with your help, we'll wake it up. Starting with Marshall, the center of your life. Marshall, and I, and every person who thinks life is valuable for its own sake – we'll join together to make a world where _no one_ will look at you and see a slave, or a monster. In our eyes, you'll be a person with real dignity who has someone to live for."

Jane looked him in the eyes. It frowned at first, but in time it relaxed. "If Marshall would want that kind of world to wake up with him, then I'll help you." It released his grip and lowered its hand. "Just promise not to touch me. And we're not friends, just –"

"Business partners? Works for me."

"So are we going all the way back to Goodsprings?"

"Not necessary. We can find a Mindscape not far from here. Best to keep Lockhart at a safe distance for a while – we'll go to Everett soon enough – and if she thinks you're incapacitated, she'll be heading for Nevada."

Jane looked puzzled. _You forgot the name after you saw Uriah get all pissy over the idea of screwing her?_ "Sabrina Lockhart, I mean. Only other Organic besides Uriah. She wanted to go with me here to take you out, but I ditched her once we got close enough. She hates you as much as Zolnerowich does."

"There are others coming for me, though. You know I have a weapon, but can we stop them?"

"Taken care of. Sabrina won't suspect a thing. Now come on," he said as he led the way toward the nearest automobile. "We have a world to wake up."

### PART 3

### DIVERSION

" _It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship, that makes unhappy marriages."_

– _Friedrich Nietzsche_

CHAPTER 13

Uriah woke up refreshed. Across the room from his bed was a calendar with photos of exotic lizards. Pat's birthday, if he'd been keeping track of the days correctly. He dispelled the thought and all the memories it came with, as he had never believed folks who say your loved ones never leave you when they die. They do, you never will see them again, and it hurts like a devilish disease until you decide to let them go.

Of course, Livingston had resurrected, but Uriah figured the discomfort of the notion that he might do so again outweighed the solace Pat's revival could bring. For who would wish another life upon his beloved in a world gone to pieces because of someone else's other life?

Getting up and striding to the door, he couldn't obstruct the flow of memories completely. "Dennis, you seriously shouldn't have," she'd said last year. "You know I don't like to make birthdays a big deal, and I would say money doesn't grow on trees, but that kinda isn't true."

She couldn't help appreciating his gift regardless, and the recollection of following events brought a smile to Uriah's face that vanished when he heard Sabrina say the four deadliest words in a woman's dictionary.

"We need to talk."

It was irrational, sure. What was the worst a girl who was basically fifteen could say to him? Still, his reply was as cautious as it was unnecessary. "Was everything okay last night?"

"Sure, if you can call finding out we're stuck inside here at the mercy of the whims of a dead man's robot slaves 'okay.' Have a seat."

She ignored Uriah's muttering, "Just asking."

Complying, he asked, "Couldn't you just break the windows if necessary?"

"Tried, didn't work. Nanos must've reinforced everything." Sabrina sat across from him to put him at ease. Her next words were dripping with implication. "I don't know what could drive them to keep us in here, alone, indefinitely, with no living master to tell them to do so, but it's all right, because we need to sort out a few things."

"Shoot." He kept his cool.

"Uriah, mind explaining these to me?"

She showed him the videos, waving away his accusation of a violation of his privacy. "Any reason a robot out there would send those to you?"

He diverted his eyes away from hers, blue and viciously contracted. "Like I'm supposed to know why it had the video at all. Just Livingston's spying, yeah, but I'm as clueless as you are as to why." That was a lie. Livingston could only be aiming to drive a wedge of distrust between them, but damned if he knew the "why" of _this_ , much less the "how" if he'd blasted Livingston's brain beyond reconstruction.

"You sure you didn't plan this? This house arrest?"

"You're being ridiculous." He told himself not to cross his arms, as it would only hurt him in the long run. "Why would I have a robot send me that video clip when you could intercept it, even if I wanted to lock myself in here with you?"

Sabrina shrugged slightly, trying to keep his eye contact in apparent fear that he would do something malicious the second she took her eyes off his. "Maybe you needed that clip to review something, to make sure you didn't accidentally mess up your story, and it just slipped your mind 'cause you were so tired last night."

Uriah was about to protest, but she held up her hand. "And as for that 'even if' part, don't kid yourself. You're... deprived. No more Pat, no more benefits that come with a proximate female. 'Til now. For all I know, you could've set this all up, killing almost the entire human population just to give the government a reason to let you have me."

"Now you're really nuts. Do I look like a pedophile?"

"I'm not a kid," she snapped. "To you, I'm the closest – and only Organic – woman by tens of thousands of miles, who happens to look a little, er, youthful."

_She must have trust issues,_ he realized. _Livingston._ "Sabrina, please. Let's be sane here. Set aside that I'd have to be an idiot of the highest order to let that video fall into your hands and incriminate myself. Is there any sign whatsoever about my personality that would lead ya to think I'm willing to –?"

"If people could easily tell the difference between rapists and non-rapists, they wouldn't suffer that injustice as much, now would they? Besides, why risk my dropping dead before I have a child? I know what Zolnerowich told you to do, Uriah."

Uriah could no longer stand this. "Do you also know that I told her I was against it? Listen, Sabrina, I don't know what's going through your head to make you believe this garbage, but it's insulting to the both of us."

"Well, excuse me!" she cried shrilly, standing up. "What else am I supposed to believe? What, that Livingston's back from the dead again and he's screwing with us? For God's sake, it's hard enough to believe he rose the first time!"

Uriah narrowed his eyes. "That's a funny thing to hear from a Christian."

"What?" She was still hysterical, just also confused now.

"You believe Jesus resurrected, don'tcha? Why not Livingston?"

"Oh, that? Why'd you think I'd believe that?"

He didn't know what to make of this. Perhaps another of Livingston's antics of mind modification, but he seemed to have removed the tendency towards her belief in Christianity, rather than knowledge of the faith's existence. _Smart sociopath, brings him that much closer to what he wants._ He looked off to the side and said, "Never mind."

"So why do you expect me to believe Livingston magically returned?"

"It's not necessarily magic, first of all, and second, what makes you think it's either A, I'm a pervert, or B, Livingston did it?"

"Well, who else could have?"

"That's bad logic," he said as calmly as he could. "I'm not guilty until another likely suspect pops up, I'm innocent until proven guilty."

Sabrina took particular offense to this. "I'm just picking the best explanation I have!"

"Which you can't do until you've thought of all the options." He met her gaze. "Look, we're not the only humans alive besides Livingston. I'd say Zolnerowich has plenty of motivation to trap us together. Ya might as well call this a breeding ground rather than a house."

"Just how would sending that video help speed up the process?"

Neither of them spoke in the awkwardness that question created, much less did Uriah even have an answer. Crazy as Sabrina saw it, he had to admit the Livingston hypothesis fit the facts better. She finally said, "I don't think Governess Zolnerowich would use such a barbaric method, anyway. She's a slimy politician, but she's no control freak, Dennis."

So they were back on first-name terms. Good. "You're right there. If there's anything I don't trust Zolnerowich about, it's not that, so much as how she feels about Jane." That recalled a quandary he'd been turning over in his mind last night. "Sabrina, I don't get what happened before you got here. Ya say Zolnerowich sent you to Earth to incapacitate Jane, right?"

She nodded as she sat.

"Why you? Why not a professional who knows robot psychology?"

"Because I'm an Organic. You don't send a Transhuman up against a bot with an EM gun built into its hand."

" _Her_ hand."

"Excuse me?"

He explained himself matter-of-factly. "Jane's a woman. She has a brain just like a woman's, 'cept it's not gray matter."

"Women aren't made to be slaves," she said with slight contempt.

"The way she tells me it, she isn't a slave. She knows she has no choice but to love Marshall, but she thinks that's a good thing."

"You can't be serious!"

"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not saying slavery is okay if ya like it, but if her brain was made with a tendency to love someone unconditionally and completely, and she doesn't have any freedom to take, is it really slavery?"

"Forget it. I don't want another reason to distrust you, so just tell me where you were going with these questions."

Great, he was losing her. "Okay, so, why'd you agree to stop Jane from sabotaging the shuttle if you were going to do that?" He knew the answer was that she had never blown up the shuttle, but he wanted to know just how elaborate Livingston's lies could be.

"Because I didn't want to blow it up at first. I wanted to aid the world by getting those ambassadors on _terra firma_ safely."

"So what changed your mind?"

Sabrina made no eye contact, preferring to look at some unsightly Amish plates. "It was really impulsive of me, and in the end I regretted it, but I decided I didn't want to help those people ruin the world."

"I see."

"They're parasites. I want nothing to do with them."

That was all the explanation he needed, even if he was slow to believe it. What was more likely, that she'd betrayed innocent people and was confessing it willingly to him, or that Livingston had deluded her with the same means by which he'd removed all memories of him from her brain? Plus, it contradicted her insistence that he shouldn't judge all Unnaturals.

"Sabrina, why are you telling me this? You showed your hand before ya knew I'd killed Livingston."

She hesitated. "I don't know, I guess it's because I just needed to get the guilt off my chest. And I wanted to show my trust in you, but I suppose it was wasted." She took a sip of the caffeinated beverage, called Kinetic, left untouched since at least the time he'd come downstairs.

Best not to dwell on that last part. "Don't keep yourself up for me."

"It's not _for_ you. It's so I can watch over you." Sabrina crumpled the can and looked around for a recycling bin, evidently to no avail in such a conservative home. Maybe it was just a habit, or she really was expecting her actions to have consequences for future generations. "You don't believe me, and I don't believe you."

Uriah gave up. Surrender the battle, but win the war. "All right, I'll play along. If ya don't feel comfortable around me, we can make this work. There's no such thing as impenetrable walls, or doors impossible to unlock. Let's find a weak spot in this cage, and I'll make sure to keep my privates out of a ten-foot radius of yours."

"Dennis, I'm not saying I think you're a predator, I just –"

"No, no, you're right. I'm a creepy guy who gives off a creepy vibe. If you'd rather not risk a visit from certain unwanted haploid cells of mine, I can respect that. I'll take the east half of the house, you get the west." Uriah stared off at nowhere in particular with epiphany. "No, wait!" He walked around the house, exclaiming, "Aha!" after a few moments.

Sabrina came closer than ten feet from him, a fact he supposed it better not to address aloud. "This is what basements were made for," he said as he descended the steps and turned on his flashlight. People would go sun-tanning in Siberia before he'd bother with an oil lamp.

Uriah froze before turning to Sabrina. "Don't move! You stay between that door and its frame." He drew the EM gun he'd kept for himself, aimed for the door, and pulled the trigger.

The block of wood slammed shut on Sabrina so that she was half inside, half out. He darted upstairs and threw all his weight against the door, which only nearly sent him tumbling backward to his death. He held onto the doorknob for dear life.

"Shoot again!" she screamed amidst groans. _No need to tell me twice._ He gave another try, but there was no frying these machines. Hearing her pained exclamations, Uriah pulled her arm and torso with every Newton of force he could muster until she was free. They grabbed hold of the banister as soon as the opportunity arose, listening to the death sentence that was the slam of the door.

* * * *

"What in the name of all sanity were you thinking?"

Uriah helped her to the sofa, guided by the feeble beam of only one of the handful of flashlights he would've had at his disposal with his backpack. "Just what else should I have done? You could've gotten crushed ribs from that thing if I'd waited."

"So much for 'there's no such thing as impenetrable walls,'" she muttered in a strained voice as she silently rejected his assistance. "You could've pushed me forward if it came to one or the other. Now we're gonna starve!"

"Don't be so melodramatic. Suppose the nanobots can make an unbreakable veneer, God knows how. If I'd sent you out of the basement, you'd have food, sure, but you'd be completely trapped. At least down here we have a chance of breaking out through some sort of tunnel, and two heads are better than one. For all we know, the bots could have soundproofed the door."

"Not likely," she said, clutching the damaged parts of her body. "I felt the door relax a little when you pulled me in, so if it wasn't obvious already, whoever's controlling those things wants us confined together. Which brings me back to my theory..."

Uriah set the flashlight down so as to provide maximum illumination and stood a fair distance from her. The room's most prominent features were a frayed couch and a bookshelf whose dust was probably sufficient to choke somebody if inhaled. "Don't start. I dunno about you, Sabrina, but I intend to get out of this zoo, find the brain behind it, and destroy him, her, it, whatever – before I get destroyed. If you wanna do that, too, then we'll need to trust each other. And the only way to get trust out of people is with the truth."

"Meaning?"

"Blackmail." He put one hand in his pocket, using the other to illustrate his speech as he paced the floor. "You know I probably caused the apocalypse, which you have a lot more reasons to reveal to those parasites at Luna than I do to violate you. Which is why I'd like to level the playing field here by reminding you that I have just as much evidence, if not more, that you bombed _Strange_."

Sabrina seemed to have gotten over most of her pain, saying in a relatively low voice, "That's not trust. That's fear."

"Normally I'd agree with ya. Results are always better when no one has to make threats to place power in other people's hands for their own sake. But now we have no choice but to trust _in_ fear." There was an unusually substantial pause in which Uriah considered how he would articulate his thoughts on such a delicate matter. It helped him in this objective to see how long he could go staring at the light in the center of the room.

At last he said slowly, "Suppose you didn't have the power you do have over me, and that I lack the same amount of power. Besides what we know about each other's pasts, my potency to screw you balances out your possession of the only Organic-threatening gun in this house." His eyes flickered to the holster on Sabrina's pants. "Take that stuff away, and what are we left with? Two people with enough mutual respect to put faith in each other's good intentions.

"Be honest. Did you see me as a decent person before ya knew there was at least a possibility that I wanted to, ahem, subvert your consent?"

"As decent as a borderline antisocial guy who stabs robots with metal beams can be, yeah."

Still not budging, but he knew every ice queen had a melting point. "I can say the same for you, but 'emotionally precarious' instead of 'antisocial.' Beggars can't be choosers in a world this short on people, though, so if the only things standing in the way of our working together are powers that cancel out, we have no excuse to play the suspicion game. That's what the person who's cornered us here wants us to do."

Sabrina's facial features, put in sharp contrast by the light and darkness, loosened up very slightly as she looked down and said, "Okay, you win. I guess I was being... proud."

"And you don't need to apologize for that. Pride is a virtue as long as ya earn it."

She smirked. "Who's apologizing?"

"That's the spirit. Now let's shut up and look for sweet spots in this bugger."

Thus began their hunt, after Sabrina offered Uriah her hand, which he gladly shook. He could've sworn he saw some redness on her face for a second, but he quickly returned to the task. They spent these next minutes in silence, with Uriah doing most of the physical searching in light of Sabrina's partial incapacitation and sleep deprivation. She kept a meticulous log of signals her belt picked up, looking for patterns. Both of their duties were more difficult than they needed to be for lack of sufficient lighting, and they carried out such jobs in constant dread of further nanobot complications.

"Anything I should know about?" asked Sabrina. He heard her stomach growling.

"Nada, you?" Uriah crawled close to the walls with his head turned nose parallel to the floor. Dead bugs littered the junctures of wall and floor, and that was just what he could see.

"Nothing, except..." She paused for no fewer than three seconds. "I've got a – wait..."

Uriah sat up to face her. "Good news, bad news?" That was wishful thinking in the question itself.

Another "patience" hand up. Her eyes were glued to the screen of her PDA. "I think something's sending signals from here to... the moon."

No one spoke until Uriah returned to his prior task. "Okay, then, that makes things simpler."

"Sure, but not easier. Who do you wanna bet can be crueler: that city on the moon, or the nanos?"

"Maybe they're the same thing, if Zolnerowich is behind this."

She scoffed shortly, but seemed to give it up. "So what'll we do? Neither of us is making any progress."

"We'll do what we've been doing," he said as if this were obvious.

"Dennis, face it. The puppeteer in this whole game is playing to win." She walked over to him and sat on the floor. "We're stuck until Zolnerowich takes us to the gallows, so we might as well focus on finding some food and water, let alone figuring out how to extend the supply for days, at least."

"I'm not one to give up without a fight, Sabrina," said Uriah, who turned to face her with a less than calm expression.

"Neither am I, but I know when to regroup, and I'm surprised you don't."

He shook his head and went back to his search, which lasted all of five seconds before he stopped and got up.

"Given up?" She was at least trying to contain the "I told you so."

"Guess again, O you of little faith." Uriah returned, at the opposite end of the room, to his sleuthing position. "I have a hunch."

"You never have hunches." Which he agreed with, but there was a first time for everything.

"Just watch," he said with a punch through what turned out to be flimsy drywall. There was as much wariness as pleasant surprise in Sabrina's face when he turned around.

"How did you know –?"

"Like I said, I didn't. I just saw something about this wall and, well, I was right."

Sabrina joined him by the hole, peering inside to find a small room dug out of that space. "Is that food?"

It was. Enough rations to feed your average family for a week, just sitting in a pile on a relatively clean floor. None of it appeared spoiled, and even the surrounding paraphernalia retained not the slightest trace of gunk, mold, or insects.

"I don't buy it," said Sabrina, backing out. "This can't be anything but the trapper's doing."

Uriah laughed. _So suspicious._ "Sure it is, but it's food. I'd rather die of poison than slow starvation." _I don't wanna scream along with Andy._

She gave him a what-has-gotten-into-you stare as he unwrapped a pastry. "That's what the Zookeeper wants us to think. Don't you see, Dennis? He's creating the cancer and expecting us to be thankful for the chemo."

"I get it, Sabrina, I really do." As he talked, he was checking just how large the supply of water was. There was none, only a few bottles of hard liquor. "Case in point, the little sneak's trying to get at least one of us drunk. I wouldn't put it past him to put some sort of edible narcotics in the food."

Self-conscious, he stopped himself from biting into his breakfast immediately. It occurred to him that they would have no toilets with which to dispose of the remainder of such food anyway. "But should we find no way outta this place, I'm not saying we should ignore the food altogether, either. We're not selling our souls to the devil here. We're taking some risks."

"Okay, then, say one cup of that alcohol does inebriate me – very likely with my body. Then I _would_ be selling my soul, figuratively. I might shoot you, or worse. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say our captor's already messed with your head."

Uriah replaced the food into its package, creasing his brow. "Care to explain that?"

"You just all of a sudden had this intuition to break that wall." Sabrina snatched the pastry from his hand and stuffed it into her pocket. "Sometimes it's a good idea to follow your gut, but you're not the type who does that often."

"So? I can change."

"You're a human. Humans don't change without strong reasons, and I think your reason is that nanobots have been messing with your brain, directly or with a mind-mod device." She pointed to her belt. "This thing confirms my theory."

"You're delusional."

"Do the names Dunning and Kruger mean anything to you?"

Uriah suddenly took her hand, saying, "Sabrina, I think you need some rest. It's been a long morning, and the caffeine's probably hurting you more than it helps."

She was reluctant, but she soon sighed in resignation. "Maybe you're right. But I'll sleep in there." She nodded at the food storage room. "I still think you're too unstable to be anywhere near drugged food or booze. If you try to take it, I'll know."

"Oh, okay, sounds fair," he said in a disappointed voice. When God closes a door of paranoia, he opens a window.

"It's nothing personal, really. I just want to protect both of us. You can try to get us out of here in the meantime."

"Sure."

Sabrina climbed into the annex, notably without leaving her gun behind, and Uriah tossed her a floral quilt that had adorned the sofa. "There's no pillow, sorry. Rest easy."

Uriah surveyed the silent area, realizing the depth of his newfound loathing of Sabrina Lockhart.

CHAPTER 14

The search was, of course, fruitless, yet Uriah couldn't say he didn't get anything out of the experience between Sabrina's sleeping and her waking. It gave him time to plan how to kill her. He didn't relish the notion of her demise as much as he had with Livingston, but it had to be done. Her existence cut his food supply in half, and she could shoot him at the slightest wrong movement, paranoid as she was.

Uriah recognized fully his own paranoia about her paranoia. He wasn't deluded. There was more to his decision, and thus was his thought process as he set out on a simultaneous wild goose chase:

Obviously, there was the matter of Sabrina's being more willing to regard him as a potential molester than to acknowledge the simple truth that Livingston had conquered death. Incriminating as the video of his foray into Livingston's basement had been, it was also corroboration of his story. Maybe she could have noticed this and dismissed it as a forgery designed to make the story more believable, but that view contradicted her distrust of him on the grounds that he'd caused the Housekeeping.

She couldn't eat her cake and have it, too, and as Uriah crept closer to the hideout in nigh palpable darkness, he suspected she would realize this were she receptive to reason.

Indeed, she might even be a neurotic masochist. The signs of her confused lust for him were unmistakable. He wasn't prepared to leave alive such a time-bomb of instability, who was likely _trying_ to be violated – so baffling were her suspicions. God knew what other brainwashing Livingston could've performed on Sabrina, and she was currently in a room with highly concentrated alcohol. It was only a matter of time before these problems would surface.

So how to dispose of her? He didn't know, nor did he need to. The same intuitive confidence that had welled up inside him dozens of minutes before, when he'd pierced the wall, now drew him through the hole. She was almost certainly asleep. _Just grab a bottle, raise it high, and –_

A sharp injection of pain surged through Uriah's lower left leg, sending him crashing into the partially dismantled wall before he could seize the drink. In the faint light that escaped the basement proper, he could see with briefly distorted vision Sabrina, pointing her gun toward his neck. She was inexplicably wearing the quilt around her head, save her eyes and mouth.

"Pretend you're a plant if you know what's good for you," she said in a muffled voice. "I'm gonna get something."

By this point he'd been wishing he could photosynthesize anyway, hence he obeyed. After moments of equal parts terror and bewilderment, he saw Sabrina returned, gun still locked on him. He would have yelled next, but she'd already given him his own unorthodox headgear and pinned him to the ground.

Feeling the barrel directly over his heart, he continued his planty business as Sabrina joined him on the floor and moved close enough to be able to breathe her next words to him. "Keep calm, I'm not gonna shoot you. Talk as softly as I do, and let me explain."

She did not displace the gun.

"I think I know what was wrong with you back there. It's a mind-mod after all, not nanos." There was a pregnant pause, after which she spoke more hastily. "Those are like weak radiation – they can only penetrate so thin a material. If we just keep our heads covered enough, our brains will be safe."

Uriah jostled the area near the gun very slightly, eliciting Sabrina's reply, "You're not gonna hurt me? I'll move it if you promise."

"I promise." He hardly felt it was necessary to say it, but guns have a way of altering people's behavior.

"I almost started drinking it, y'know," she whispered with a rustling of the quilted mass. "A drunk and a potential killer in the same room, now _that_ would be just perfect."

"Why exactly do we need to lie on the floor?" said Uriah.

"Gives us extra padding from the blankets."

"None of this helps us out or feeds us."

"No, but it keeps us from killing each other. Whoever we're hiding from is one sick excuse for a human, if it is a human."

There was nothing to add to this sentiment, unless he wanted Sabrina to know how much he hated himself for being such a helpless liability. They lay in stillness, positioned with the highest level of indignity either of them had experienced.

Yet Uriah noticed that the situation granted them a rare opportunity in recent days. "Y'know, Sabrina, in the time we've known each other, I haven't learned a thing about who you actually are. Some say you can judge a person's character best when they're in the worst of circumstances, but after half a week without any sort of small talk, I can't help but realize there's something to be said for just... everyday gab."

After another empty stomach's protest, Sabrina replied, "I know exactly what you mean. Any specific questions you have, though?"

"What was your career up there? Low-gravity gymnastics?"

"Tee-hee," she deadpanned. "I was an astronomer, thank you very much. Still am, at heart."

"You mean, the first thing you thought when you got to the freakin' moon was, 'Okay, boring, I'll look for another celestial body to live on'?"

If he had to guess what Sabrina would've done standing up, Uriah would suppose a playful punch in the arm. "Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking with my fickle twelve-year-old girl mind."

"All right, just tell me the truth. But first, is this a really inconvenient way of communicating, or is it just me?"

She answered with a careful shifting of the positions of the quilts and her body, bringing both of them under a stifling yet secure tent of protection from Neurehab. She was smiling, of all things, when Uriah locked eyes with her, the most earnest and pitifully interested smile she had expressed.

"Well, practically, observing the stars from a rock without an atmosphere is much easier than what Hubble had to do down here. Plus you don't have to worry about natural disasters on the moon." Nor about Unnaturals screwing her over, it occurred to him. Not with the scandal that would cause. "But most people have some sort of romantic reason for doing what they do for a living, and I'm hardly the exception. It's so cruel, come to think of it. I got so bored of what I did up there, but now that my life sucks even worse, I finally miss what I used to have."

"What was it about the moon that drew you to it? Something from your childhood?"

"It always is, isn't it? Sure, the actual astronomy part was something I grew into around my high school years, but I fell in love with the moon about twenty years ago. My mom was at work late on a Saturday, and my dad walked into the living room that day while I was sitting in front of the TV. I remember seeing him look at the screen, then back at me, and he just turned it off out of nowhere. He took me out back, onto the deck, and told me to look through his telescope."

By now her pupils were dilated with nostalgic immersion. "It's hard to describe what it was about the image of the moon I saw then that, well, captivated me. Maybe it was the sight of all the lit-up buildings mixed with natural scenery below it, or maybe it wasn't so much the picture as what Dad added to it with his words. He told me about how the moon provides brightness at night without actually emitting it directly like the sun does."

Her eyes drifted in the direction of the only light source in the basement before she added, with a slow nod, "Yeah, that's it! Something about the reality of a body that gives so much comforting light without all the destructiveness of the sun, all the flares, blinding effects, UV radiation – that struck me as beautiful. Forever."

Uriah delayed his response before grinning as if preparing to burst out laughing. He thought better of that, naturally. "I'm sorry, it's just so saccharine. Nice touch with the TV bit."

She scowled. "You think I made it up?"

"No, but I wouldn't be surprised if you told me you did. Come on, no one goes through that. In real life, your dad would've been dragging you kicking and screaming away from the tube."

"Not if my parents raised me right, which they did. Excuse me for having a dad who just happened to have a fondness for positive cliches. I can have a passion for my job."

"Passion is fine," he said with a coolness unperturbed by Sabrina's offense, "so long as it's real."

She sighed. "It's not like intellect had nothing to do with it, if that's what you're implying. If anything, knowing the actual science of moons and astrophysics only made the love deeper, or 'real,' if you insist. What's _your_ passion, if you think mine's so fake?" she said, propping herself up on one elbow.

"Mental pathology. I never did become an actual doctor, I mean, like I said, I was poor. But I think that, even though the number of people who would need me keeps dropping, I'd find it more fulfilling than anything else to preserve the lives of folks like you and me. Folks with bodies trying to kill us from the inside."

"Would you have given up your body? If you got rich enough, I mean."

"Stupid question, 'cause I wouldn't've gotten money from that stuff. Robots do the majority of it, all the fun parts that people will pay for. I never said my passion was my career."

Sabrina simply shook her head. He added, not wanting to really answer her original question, "Probably for the best I didn't make a job of it. It's parasitic, if you think about it. We're opposites in that sense, Sabrina. Your calling is pure science, something that doesn't have to feed off people's suffering to earn you money." Uriah turned his head skyward, suddenly rather mesmerized by the quilt's minimalist patterns of pure color. "Not mine, though. If I weren't jobless I'd be selling life."

"That's just what humans do, isn't it? We try to get whatever goodness out of the bad that we can, and besides that we look for the truth. Expand our minds. If we get lucky, the second goal helps the first."

"Sure, but it's still very cynical, this idea that we have to get money or some other incentive just to help people. Even if it's necessary." He gave a stilted laugh. "This is gonna sound all kinds of wrong given the situation, but y'know, as much as Unnaturals piss me off, I've never been against robotics. If we'd only kept the nanos under control, humanity could've gotten out of this business of selling altruism."

"Nanos were a problem before now?"

"Well, what I meant by that was that nanos caused these deaths."

Sabrina didn't look too surprised, as if she suspected this herself but had her doubts. "How does an electromagnetic pulse to that machine I saw in the video set off billions of nanobots?"

"Trillions, unless just one can kill a person. But I never pretended I knew the details. Who knows what can not only nuke someone instantaneously, but also keep them from decaying after a few days?" Looking back at her, Uriah could only see tiredness. "If you want me to get back in my own quilt, I could let you get that sleep I owe ya."

"That's all right, you can stay here if you want." She yawned and closed her eyes. "I'm comfortable around you."

_Cheap words coming from a girl with a gun, but I'll take it._ "Thanks. I'll think of a plan."

That empty promise would surely get him in trouble, as would his not hatred of, but decided indifference to, Sabrina. Still, things could be worse. He could be nearly suffocating and, after escaping the quilted coffin, slithering toward a tempting bottle of Nicky D's rum.

* * * *

He downed two of the four bottles they had within a minute. In the moments of sobriety he lived then, Uriah could only wonder how he'd slipped under Sabrina's radar. But the refreshing journey of the fluid down his esophagus dispelled all rational concerns.

No more than ten minutes after his last words to Sabrina, a sudden rush of lust for her overtook him. He still had enough sense to be stealthy, ensuring that all a third party would hear was his breath and, through a not quite soundproof yet sealed high window, the faint chirping of a jay. He brought his hands closer to the floor and the blanketed mass that lay on it, lower, lower, until one could almost mistake him for a sleeping figure.

It was hot under the quilt, so much so that he would've stopped to undress himself had a reckless jerk of his arm not interrupted him.

A foreign object brought Uriah a sensation of such pain density in his shoulder that he fell crashing forward.

"You're _drunk_? Really?" The voice, so simultaneously vitriolic and frightened he could barely recognize it, wrapped one of the covers around his head once more. From his limited range of vision she appeared to hop over him toward an empty Nicky D's, throwing it at the far wall, and snatching a sharp piece of glass fearlessly. "Hold still, you rummy."

She sliced a strip of the cloth off and wrapped it around Uriah's wound, which had disabled him too severely for any of his protests. "Ugh, this is just what I needed!" she moaned at the sight of the speed with which Uriah's blood seeped through the cloth. She turned toward the wall. "What more do you want, you goddamn sadist?"

Meanwhile Uriah, still face-down, was spouting a cacophony of curses while trying to grab Sabrina with his uninjured arm. "Com'ere, super fr–"

"Get offa me!" Sabrina crushed his hand with the heel of her shoe. "I dunno what stupid reason you had for exposing your brain, and that's giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but this has to stop."

Uriah was in tears now, swearing some more, and none of this made him want her any less. _Give her a minute, she'll get tired of games, and then –_

Sabrina shoved two pills into his mouth and clamped it shut. In his mind, this only confirmed his suspicions. She was trying to get him to choke. What was the harm in playing along? Eventually apathy caught up with him and the pills went down.

"There. Painkillers." She grabbed her gun, picked up the remaining rum and held it out of his reach, and backed away through the hole. "Now, don't say a word or your ass is grass."

Painkillers? Uriah had a feeling that was bunk. The Sabrina he knew probably gave him something a little more conducive to her desires. Perhaps a hit of something to make him...

* * * *

In his dream, Uriah had prophesied that he would awake to find himself at the mercy of his master's whims.

In reality, he didn't discover his body in his waking room at all. He had no headache.

"You didn't do it," he said in calm shock.

Sabrina made no eye contact. Her voice was stoical. "I'm sorry, Dennis, but I had to. Think of it this way. Now you're safe from mind-mod – if the Zookeeper wanted you dead it would've stopped me from doing this – and you won't bleed to death, you can't get drunk again, and that's one fewer mouth to feed."

"But don't I still need water?"

"There's a week's supply built into the Libertas."

"And after that?" He grimaced.

"Same thing that would've happened to us anyway. You're better off dehydrated than hypovolemic or drunk enough to kill yourself." Sabrina was still wearing the utterly humorless expression she'd had at his waking. "I can't believe I left you there even for a few seconds near that broken glass."

Uriah heaved a bitter sigh as he sat up. There was something unreal and incredibly disorienting about experiencing all this around him, like having every sense subjected to that feeling of putting on asymmetrical eyeglasses. "How long have I been out of it?"

"It's Tuesday, if that answers your question."

The windows showed it was dark out. "Tuesday _night_?"

"Hey, it takes a while to do a Libertas transplant, and I needed some sleep."

"How'd you even know how to make the switch? And where'd you get the bot at all?"

Sabrina nodded toward a closet near the stairs and took a bite out of an apple he'd only just noticed existed. "Don't worry, I... tested some of it on a rat." He shuddered. "No drugs or poison as far as I can tell, and it's got water in it to boot. Anyway, you know how you 'just knew' where that room would be in the first place?" Her eyes darted to the bookshelf, then the ground. "I had that same sense."

"Why did you trust it?"

"Because it helped me perform the transplant." She gave a shrug of total apathy. "Dennis, I'm sick of waiting around for this puppeteer to kill us off. If I'm gonna die, it might as well be because I took a chance and told that monster that I'm not gonna follow its rules. This is my game as much as it is its, or yours."

Uriah didn't know this woman. He shook his head. "You have no idea how crazy that is to me, do you?"

"What, because you're a coward?"

"Because I don't wanna die, imagine that! Not when I live in the one generation that just might have a shot at immortality."

"Right, go ahead and contradict your hatred of Libertas bodies."

"Sabrina, people can change!" Uriah escaped the bed without asking if this was safe in his condition. "Why is that so difficult for you to believe?" Deep down he knew it was difficult for him to believe, too, but having said otherwise to her made it easier to resolve that he would give the finger to stagnation.

"A simple 'thank you for saving my life' would work, you know," she hissed. She rested her chin on her hand and looked toward the moon.

"Well how exactly d'you think I feel? Not like it's just hunky-dory to find out how much of a helpless waste of everybody's time and oxygen I am!"

"Oh, have some cheese with that whine. You know damn well your life is worth living. If anyone else had found themselves in your situation, back when the world went to pieces, chances are they couldn't've cared less about those animals you tried to save. They would've sold my liberty for 'humanity's future.'"

He waved this away and walked off so that he couldn't see her.

"You set out to stop a dangerous man from making the world burn, when you could've easily popped the blue pill on that machine at Goodsprings. And you gave Jane some real dignity, where lesser men would've treated her like a machine at best."

Sabrina stepped up close enough to grasp Uriah's shoulder, turn him around, and jab a finger at the middle of his chest. "Don't you tell me you're a waste of oxygen."

"You are so full of it!" He swatted off her hand with more force than he would've liked to admit. "Those poor creatures are dying because of me, you're a slave to Livingston because of me, and he's still out prepared to turn the rest of the human race into his drugged-up puppets because of _me_! Because of my failures."

He could see the pained look of Sabrina's despising him, fearing him, but most of all, being disappointed in him. Yet he couldn't care in his rage.

"Even if we were winning against this, this – devil, it sure as hell isn't any product of my compassion. This is my battle for life, for a universe that, at last, isn't gonna take every step it can to ruin me. Not for anyone else except Pat... and you." He left Jane unmentioned.

"Fine then, if you think you're such a screw-up, then do something about it!" She said this in such a shaky manner, but this was nonetheless the greatest stand he'd seen her take. "I don't have any patience for self-pity. You know why? Because you're just using it as an excuse to stay in the comfort of your own misery."

Uriah knew not how to reply to this, except to suspect based on her slight hesitation that she wasn't being entirely honest. She took a seat by the wall, and minutes passed in silence.

At last he approached her, sitting. "You miss life up there, don't ya?"

"Mostly. What was your first clue?"

He opted for feigned ignorance of her sarcasm. "Probably it was that story you told me about your dream. I hope you didn't take that too seriously, Sabrina. I like to pretend I'm some elitist realist, but at the end of the day I can respect anyone's hopes. Mine's pretty pie-in-the-sky."

She didn't reject his arm around her waist.

"Your dad sounds like a great man. I hate TV, too."

"He was," she said without tears. "If it weren't for him, I never would've lived in Luna. I wouldn't've lived at all after last Thursday."

"I thought you said you didn't know humans lived on Earth, back in Everett."

She looked him in the eyes, contemplating with an unshakable solemnity. "I did, didn't I? Must've been off my rocker." After a pause in which she looked away with some embarrassment, she asked, "What's it like in there?"

"Surreal. Like a normal body, but without all those minor discomforts that you wonder how you lived with at all. No itches, no pain from unusual positions, no annoying eyelash meshing, no clogged ears, and no hunger. Come to think of it, why didn't you get one of these? You must've been wealthy enough if you went to the moon."

Sabrina took a few seconds to reply, her gaze moving off to the side even though the DIY helmet blocked her vision there. "I don't know. I just had too much attachment to this body, 'warts and all.' I've experienced everything through this meat puppet, you know what I mean?"

Livingston was good. It was as if Sabrina had always been this way.

"Sorta." He glanced at the fruit in her hand. "You all right? What with the apple and all."

"Perfectly fine." Sabrina was about to rest her head on his shoulder, but she became aware of the quilt around her head and laughed sardonically. "Sorry. I must look like a sultan, huh?"

"Go ahead." No woman besides Pat had been in such a position with him, and he wasn't sure how to keep her from getting the wrong idea. Uriah hesitated. "Was I horrendous? While drunk, I mean."

"Let's just say I'm really glad you'll never act like that again," she said hoarsely. "I'm sorry I ever suspected you, Dennis, I just –"

"Say no more. You more than made up for it. Wait..."

Uriah eased her off him and started to check around the basement. "Did ya find any other robo-bodies?"

"Nope."

He looked at her with such guilt. "You gave me the only Libertas here?"

"Don't make me a bighead martyr."

_Wish granted._ "Do I wanna know where my body is?"

"That's something only you can answer. It's in the closet, though."

He did want to know. Not stopping to dwell on the fear, he stepped up to the door, turned the knob, and pulled.

There was no brainless corpse. What did occupy the small room was a smudged, gunky, old-fashioned mirror. The visage staring back at him was that of an unmistakable celebrity of the southern Nevada area: Marshall Patterson.

* * * *

"It's a missing body, who do you think is responsible? Don'tcha think it might be the guy with the key to this cage?"

"You _were_ the person who took my brain out of it. I'm just asking."

"Yes, but might I remind you that the whole reason we're arguing over this is that some intelligent being, whose identity we don't know, is messing with us? And probably trying to spark this kind of conflict in the first place, I may add."

Uriah sat and gestured for Sabrina to follow suit. "I'm not arguing with you. I'm just trying to sort out a mystery."

Sabrina was not so at ease, remaining standing. "Yeah, well, I assure you nothing I can tell you would solve it. Let's just focus our energy on more pressing matters, like, I don't know, getting out of here alive? That's exactly what he doesn't want us to do, hence the distraction."

"You said, 'he'," Uriah mumbled.

"Because I'm sexist. No, yeah, I admit it, you were right. It's probably Livingston after all."

Uriah thought of how best to minimize the puppeteer's chances of overhearing their plotting. He motioned for her to follow him, seized the remainder of the second blanket to cover them, and whispered, "All right, let's think carefully. How do you get out of a cage?"

"You pick the lock."

"Or you get the key from the person who put you in there."

"Which only comes from kissing his ass, which I'm not prepared to do."

"You're censoring yourself. Come on, we can do better than that." He stared at the emerald carpet floor. "This captor's almost certainly human if it's cornered us this far. The only robot that might have the motivation for this is Jane, but that's impossible. She's just not a smart cookie, and the incentive isn't there. What kinda weaknesses do all humans have that can we use to get the key?"

"Ego comes to mind. And fear. Naivety. Bias."

"All easier said than exploited."

"Well, what's your idea?"

He had no immediate answer. "We can't know how to manipulate him," he said slowly, "until we figure out what he wants. Promising some gain for the manipulated works best, after all."

"Does it?"

He scoffed. "Whaddya mean, 'does it'? It's the most rational conclusion. After all, everyone does what they do for some benefit to themselves, or to a cause they care about."

She gave a you-say-the-darnedest-things smile. "If there's one thing I hope I teach you after all this, it's that people aren't rational, Dennis. You don't persuade people with rewards. You use tested psychological methods, like convincing them you're similar to them. Humor also helps, and it's even easier if you talk about the matter over a meal. Heck, get them to answer other questions positively that you know they'll say yes to anyway."

"That _is_ irrational. But assuming you're right, how do we talk to this guy? I'm still not sure he's not dead."

"We could just ask." Without ado, Sabrina got out from under their quilt and looked all around the room as she said, "Okay, Livingston, we're at our wits' end here. Dennis and I would like to talk to you, so if you're there, give us some sorta message. Thank you."

They waited. Nothing happened.

"And here I was thinking that'd work," said Uriah as he saw Sabrina return. She leered but seemed to let it go with a sigh, as if at least his comment had diverted her mind from more depressing matters. Like that their minds were at the mercy of the puppeteer every second, and seeing no effects of this was all the more terrifying. "How about we find something that Livingston probably doesn't want us to do, and threaten aloud to do it? It's more blackmail, I know, but what other choice is there?"

"I guess there isn't one." Sabrina concentrated. "Let's not assume this person is necessarily Livingston. All we know about – let's say 'him' for simplicity's sake – is, first, he confined us in a house devoid of electronics, most likely using nanobots based on what I've seen of the windows and doors. Second, he waited about half a day after we entered the house to trap us in this basement, and he's since provided food, liquor, and the Libertas of Marshall Patterson. He tried to subvert our wills with Neurehab-like technology, but when we found a loophole he let us get away with it."

"Not for long," he interjected. "I never told you... I didn't get the rum on purpose. It's hard to believe, I know, but I felt this literally uncontrollable urge to keep my mouth shut and sneak out from under the covers to get a drink. I know I drank a couple bottles, but after that I don't remember a lick."

"That's not normal. But I believe it after all this. Anyway, what have I missed?"

"You said I would've bled to death, right? Did you give me any drugs before making the switch?"

She nodded. "A painkiller and an anesthetic. That's important. It's like he's planned this, especially considering the Libertas."

"Maybe..." Uriah trailed off and nonverbally tried to dismiss it.

"Maybe what?"

"He was trying to do all this to force one of us into an exoskeleton, but why? With your hands on an EM gun it's easier to nab an Unnat–" He knew the problem with this as he said it. "A Transhuman, I mean. But if he wanted to kill us he could've gotten it over with. Either he just likes to play with his food before he eats it, or we need to read more between the lines."

"It could just be a power complex. Suppose this fella has never had so much control over the fates of human lives before. Suppose he was like you, someone who just wanted to work hard to live a humble dream, but who got maligned by a culture that didn't have room for people like him. After so many years of learned helplessness and being labeled lazy by the haves as the cause of your being a have-not, wouldn't you grab hold of whatever source of practically godlike power you found? Assuming you didn't have empathy, which about five percent of the population doesn't anyway."

"Most of which are people who've purposely mind-modded themselves." He shivered. "It's hard to imagine not having empathy in the first place."

"When the chips are down, I think anyone's capable of overriding any altruism they have."

Uriah noticed she was getting slightly closer, touching his hand and likely surprised at how it wasn't cold.

"I'm not saying this is necessarily what's going on," she said, "but it's my best guess. I'd like to think it's been Livingston all along, since then at least we're dealing with someone we know something about, but I still have my doubts, Dennis. I mean, I saw the body. Out of the corner of my eye, on Sunday. His head was so bloody, I just... don't see it."

"True, I can't see why he'd bring us together, specifically." Seeing her look, he said more defensively, "Hey, it _could_ just be because we're the only other kids in his playground, or this is all about what we suspected it was before. Might not fit all the data, but this looks a lot like a Mission: Repopulation to me."

Sabrina wasn't convinced. "Oh yeah, well then why the Libertas? They don't exactly make those things for reproduction."

"I could've –" His heart sank. "I didn't. Did I?"

"What?"

"Do I have to spell it out? I was drunk, anything could have happened, even..." Was that why Livingston had waited so long to Unnaturalize him?

She was now a little more sympathetic, but there was a hint of something else he couldn't put his finger on. "Dennis, I promise I'd tell you if I were pregnant."

"Would you? Come on, you have every reason to hide it. I wasn't in control of myself, and if you acknowledged the alcohol screwed me up royally, then maybe you just didn't want to make me guilty." Nothing in his expression betrayed guilt, but he was undeniably tense. "Chrissakes, like I said, I could've done anything, probably something so horrible you've repressed it."

"Oh, please!" She was about to cry. "Repressed memories are a myth! No one forgets something so traumatic that it changes her whole view of the world and – and the amount of faith she puts in people. Including herself!"

The dam broke. Uriah hated himself for turning away. He knew he should do something, but he was never good with womanly tears. Pat had never cried. That was one of the things he'd loved about her.

Sabrina, by contrast, let the sobs flow for half a minute before speaking again. When she showed her face, or at least what could be seen of her face with the quilt, it was red and soaked, her thick golden hair ruffled. "I'm sorry, Dennis, I shouldn't let myself get like this, but dammit, I just _hate_ it when people use bad psychology when it comes to this stuff. It's not your fault, you just don't know any better, but a lot of therapists do know better and do nothing about it!"

To say he felt awkward would be as tremendous an understatement as that Earth had a rather short supply of conscious humans. "Could you please just, uh, keep it down?"

"They belittle real people's real experiences by seeing these memories of awful, _awful_ things that aren't there." She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "And they delude themselves so much that they get children to believe these atrocities about themselves. Then not only do innocent people, their _parents_ even, suffer for this, but these kids have to carry that pain of alienation from people they trusted and the scars of something that did – not – happen!"

"Sabrina, do you wanna talk –"

"No! This is another distraction, we need to move on and get outta here!"

Uriah touched her arm and gave her the most sincere appearance of concern he could have for this pathetic, ugly woman. "Sabrina, please, listen to me. We can break out all we want, but it's not worth it if we're not human by the time we do. It wouldn't be human of me to let you bury this."

Part of him was afraid he'd already let himself surrender his humanity. That was why he was looking into her eyes not with his own, but with those of a man evidently disillusioned with the extent to which real humans can love.

CHAPTER 15

"So you've never been abused yourself?"

As they were not currently plotting anything, concealment seemed moot, which is why they sat next to, and facing, each other on the beige couch. Sabrina's skull was still protected, yet Uriah could see her melancholy face as she explained what she'd said. It was midnight.

"Right. I don't even know any abuse victims personally, but that doesn't mean I can't sympathize with them, of course." She took a deep breath. "This happened before I went to Luna. I must've been eight or so. One night, I saw this... alien."

He looked down and to the side, nonplussed.

"Relax, I'm not gonna get my foil hat and analyze crop circles. I know it was a hallucination, probably from sleep paralysis, temporal lobe stimulation, or a combination of the two. But at the time I was terrified."

"Understandably so," he said with less skepticism.

"It was a grotesque thing, and it did some, er, things to my body." She kept her eyes away from him. "So I imagined, anyway. I also felt like I was floating a few feet above my bed, and I believed this was some sort of telekinesis. I screamed out so loud I thought I'd make myself go deaf."

"Sounds like an abduction story, all right."

"That's not what the psychiatrists thought three years later. Guess what it reminded them of."

Uriah winced. "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh.' The scary thing was, I believed them. I still don't get how I could betray Dad like that."

She didn't weep. All the tears she had had been squeezed out in the closet so as not to shame herself in front of Uriah, but he knew. "I'd rather I had just come across as a loony abductee. Sure, it might've killed my chances of going to the moon, but this hurt me, my therapist, and most of all my father. And it made a mockery of people like your girlfriend, who went through real pain." She caught herself. "Sorry."

"It's all right. She would appreciate it, if anything. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

"Besides that I hate that we're back to square one here? Not a thing."

Back to the "secret meeting tent," as they came to dub it, they went. "Okay, we can all but rule out Zolnerowich," said Uriah. "If he isn't sparing us for repopulation, what could his motive be? I mean, if we go with your 'power trip' theory, is there any way we can make this guy believe he still has power even as he lets us out?"

"We could just sneak a secret weapon out as we surrender out loud – nah, forget that, he's probably been monitoring every object here to make sure that doesn't happen." She groaned.

"Not like we have anything that could stand up to all those bots, big and small. Face it, the only strategy we have is to earn his trust, and even with that there's the problem of whatever he used to get me drunk." He paused, then punched the floor. "There's gotta be a way out, somehow!"

"Let's not reject ideas before we test them. Check your pockets." He only just realized the implications of his wearing the clothes he'd worn as an Organic, but he decided not to mention it. "Is there anything that could help us and that he wouldn't know about?"

Turning to one's pockets was the last resort of a very desperate soul, but the search did yield a crumpled sheet of paper, the fruit of his snooping through the nether regions of the Bio-Bazaar. Spread out on the floor, it depicted the intricate mechanical anatomy of a spider-like robot.

"Where'd you get that?" Sabrina said as if she'd take even a wad of lint seriously.

"At that store that ended up breaking my leg." He described what he'd found down there. "I took it because I knew from the scale that it was for a nano. Could've helped with Project Immortality, like that's gonna happen now."

"Dennis, do you remember any names you saw in that basement?"

He looked at her with significantly less enthusiasm than she was showing. "What, don't tell me you think the crackpot who had an insecure bomb shelter integrated in his store is our perp?"

She ignored his tone. "So it's a 'he'?"

"Yeah. I remember yoinking the card key from him, but I couldn't tell ya a name. I really doubt he's our guy, though."

"Why not?"

"Uh, he's dead?"

"Sure, but it takes more than one human to run a store, even these days. Think about it. Isn't it possible that he wasn't really crazy after all, that he made that shelter to protect himself from some, I dunno, radiation that caused the Dethroning?" He supposed that was her word for recent tragedies. Sabrina's eyes brightened. "Wait – no! It's not radiation, it's nanos, like you said before! Maybe a human could hack the security and get inside the shelter, but could nanobots?"

"Sounds brilliantly convenient, which is exactly why it isn't likely. Possibility isn't probability, and even granting you're right, why would he mess around with us? Someone who runs a market ain't a disgruntled potential power addict."

"Well, didn't you say yourself that Transhumans tend to commit hate crimes against Organics? And if that's the case, he could be willing to let you go now."

"Shh." He thought about it, a little disturbed by the zeal with which Sabrina had presented her hypothesis, but he gave in. "Okay, I'll humor you. I'll go to the stairs and see if he'll let me out. But I'll need a wedge in case this works, for your sake. It has to be discreet."

"Not necessary. You're a Transhuman, remember? You could out-box almost any Organic in the pro leagues."

Somehow that perk had never before occurred to him. "All right. Wish me luck."

Uriah stood up into the exposed basement. Strangely, it had become a quaint home away from no home to him. His eyes scanned the surroundings before he headed for the door.

* * * *

It was Jane. She grasped his hand, stunning him on the spot, and pulled him out of the stairway.

"You're under arrest for the murder of Isaac Livingston." As she relayed the legal mumbo jumbo, leading him outside, Uriah could only wonder why Jane wasn't the one being arrested. "Don't worry, one of these androids will take care of Sabrina," she said with a nod to a robot like the one he had speared, whose lights glowed distinctly in the night.

" _Take care of" her?_

"Let me explain. You and I are being monitored by Zolnerowich as I speak. She's only allowed me to say what's absolutely necessary to inform you. After I destroyed _Strange_ , I fled to Plestsy and tried to avoid incrimination." They entered a robotic car, in the back seat of which she confined him while she took the front.

"But the TLTB found me soon. I could've fought back, but Zolnerowich personally offered me a deal. The Lunar government considered me a threat, and they were ready to fire a concentrated EM pulse at me and all the robots I've hijacked. I knew it would be risky to try to get away again, so I agreed to surrender my built-in weapons and to help her find you, and in exchange she'd let me go free."

It was betrayal, but he couldn't have expected more from her. What choice did she have? Marshall was the center of her life, and if she didn't comply with Zolnerowich's wishes, there was no chance of her reuniting with her love.

Under Zolnerowich's microscope, he couldn't get any info out of Jane about what she meant by "robots I've hijacked." Obviously this made her the culprit for the confinement, as it would mean his suspicions about the significance of the Marshall Libertas were right, but there were many holes. If Jane had been working for Zolnerowich since he and Sabrina had reached the village, why didn't she just take him into custody immediately? If not, he still saw no reason for Jane to manipulate them.

As they re-entered industrial civilization, headed for EPD, he wondered if it could've all just been a ploy to get him inside Marshall's robo-body. The coincidence was too great, yet its implications sent a chill down his spine. The last thing he wanted was to be Jane's, well, Jane – a brain in Marshall's body, as far as she was concerned.

Yet this made no sense. Surely Marshall would've designed Jane to maintain fidelity not to an easily duplicated body, but to his unique mind. Perhaps she hadn't planned Uriah to go to prison, and there was simply something about him she found desirable as an accidental consequence of her programming, hence the saving-his-life spiel in Goodsprings. Then why steal his body?

Uriah would never again take his voice for granted.

Peripherally, he saw EMFI, reminded of the evidence against him that lay inside it. If Jane had played around with nanos the past few days, she'd done it in a manner awfully similar to Livingston's tactics. Knowing Livingston's tendency to rise from the dead, it was a doozy to know where the one ended and the other began.

_All for Pat,_ that was the mantra. Zolnerowich would understand. It was all for Pat.

* * * *

The Everett conference room was almost identical to that of Aberdeen, except androids stood on either side of the table, peering into his soul with ever-following unnatural eyes. There seemed to be fewer bars of light illuminated on the ceiling than at his last interrogation. Nothing made a sound save the buzz of cold machinery.

Harmony of events came full circle as Uriah and Jane sat next to each other and Zolnerowich's face appeared in the center of the screen. His paralysis abated.

"I am sorry it had to come to this, Mr. Uriah," she sighed. The governess glanced at her screen regularly, as no other Lunar officials were present. "You could have been an immense asset to the cause of this new age of humanity, all of your own will, but it seems we may be forced to use subversive methods."

"Why don't you start by proving your accusation, or, say, granting me a fair trial?"

"Certainly, as that is your right. You will have to undergo minor Neurehab procedures beforehand, however."

"Why?" he said with narrowed eyes. "I haven't exactly been accused of child abuse. I won't submit to anything until after my trial."

"Come now, Mr. Uriah, you did not think homicide was the most of your crimes we know of, did you? Legally, none of us can accuse you of the Dethroning, but the risk that you will commit felonies consistent with such behavior is high enough to warrant this precaution."

"Governess, surely you know what drastic effects Neurehab had on Sabrina Lockhart, if Jane's been informing you? I refuse to subject myself to anything that'll alter my memory and beliefs against my will."

Her eyes flickered up in a Planck time. "Miss Lockhart was changed for the better. She would have been a danger to society with her convictions, and I do not just mean that she would have risked the extinction of our species."

"Oh, please, you think everyone's a threat. It's not like she would've been the next Pope Innocent."

"Are you confident in that belief, Mr. Uriah?"

"As confident as the evidence shows."

She pressed something on the screen before her, turning Uriah's into a display of the interior of a helicopter. Sabrina and Livingston were discussing matters with unnerving civility.

"You won't kill your body to put your brain in a Libertas, but you're fine with the idea of killing your cousin's body to relieve her of pain?" said Livingston through Big Blue. As Sabrina told the story of her "idea," Uriah felt vaguely disturbed. Zolnerowich's interpretation of it was absurd, of course, but Sabrina's remark that "you might think it makes your past of harassment seem innocuous" was hardly promising.

"How'd you find this footage?" said Uriah when the screen returned to a view of the LPD conference room.

Jane chimed in, looking down, "She got it from me. Lunar authorities questioned me at Plestsy and asked me to get the video evidence from all the likely sources. Livingston told me before he left about what had happened before we met, and that led me to this video."

"Looks to me like Livingston's the guy who hacked the robots on Earth and kept you from talking to Sabrina, so why do you trust him?"

"He didn't do that, Dennis, I did. That's what I meant earlier about the bots I hijacked."

"Jane has informed me of its encounter with him," Zolnerowich added, "and I am not convinced his motives were malicious. Assuming that is a prerequisite to the illegality of your killing him."

_Is there a politician's version of Poe's Law?_ "You're making it very hard to take you seriously, Governess. Am I missing something here? Jane, what exactly did you tell her?"

"Everything. I said that, last Thursday, you tracked Livingston down at his house and shot him with an EM gun. The next day, I met him not far from Goodsprings, and he asked who you were, said stuff about an android he thought was responsible for the explosion at the town. I told her you suspected him of the bombing, and that when I found you after the surgery I believed you."

"Well, that settles it, doesn't it, Governess? You may not think highly of Jane, but she wouldn't lie because she has nothing to gain from protecting me here."

Zolnerowich didn't respond for a while, apparently more focused on something on her screen than on the conversation. It had to be rather important, as Uriah had never seen someone so adept at multitasking. She looked up. "I never accused the android of deceit, but even supposing sincerity entails a lack of bias, which it does not, I believe I said his motives were not malicious, and nothing more. He was acting in self-defense, if I am to believe that you did fire an EM gun at him."

There had to be something else going on behind the scenes. Zolnerowich was many things, but she was no idiot. Only a propagandist could defend bombing as self-defense. "First of all, I shot him because I was under the impression that my girlfriend wasn't lying when she said he'd raped her, and that he was likely to kill me first. And I shot him most recently in my own self-defense! Or did Jane leave out the whole 'enslaving me' detail?"

"Based on Jane's account, I would say that, if anything, his measures were no more enslavement than an officer's cuffing a criminal – and after giving that criminal benevolent medical care, I might add. Without a functional police force to aid him, one could consider Mr. Livingston's actions justified."

"Governess, we're talking about two bloody _bombs_ and a fire in the road!" he said hysterically. The security robots were getting closer, but Zolnerowich made a gesture that pacified them.

She waved her hand impatiently. "There is insufficient indication that he was responsible for those, and Jane has since altered its position on this matter."

"Oh, has she, now?"

"You never let it finish." Zolnerowich nodded stiffly to Jane. "Proceed, android."

"I confessed to flying to Plesetsk Cosmodrome and sabotaging _Strange_. Along the way to Plestsy, Livingston and I crossed paths again, and he took me there to test one of those machines on me that he used on you."

"How are you not getting some seriously suspicious vibes from this guy, Governess?" Self-aware, he soon added, "Excuse me, Jane."

"Jane told me that this was in no way a detrimental agreement to it, as you would know from your pleasant experience with the aforementioned machine. His use of it on a human was certainly questionable if not merciful to you, but in the context of the situation on Sunday, I would say he was in the right. Mr. Livingston sought to keep the android under control until he could reestablish connections between Earth and Luna."

The sheer density of lies was about to give Uriah an ulcer, but he breathed in and told Jane, "Continue."

"After what must have been hours, an android disconnected me from the Mindscape. It was operated remotely by Governess Zolnerowich, and that's when the interrogation happened. She knew about the murder from videos of the EMFI."

Uriah looked to the side thoughtfully. "'Operated remotely'? So that must have happened after Livingston died, which means you couldn't have been the one who locked me in that house, Jane. There wouldn't be enough time for you to fly here." He turned to Zolnerowich with a piercing glare. "You, on the other hand, would have the means and the motive to do that."

"Spare me your petty accusations. We know who conspired against you and Miss Lockhart."

"Mind telling me how ya knew where to find me in the first place? And explaining those signals Sabrina detected that were headed for the moon?"

"Jane led us to you. It knew you would not be far from your hometown, and it reported a strange migration of robots toward the offending house yesterday."

"So how'd Jane get in if you didn't help her by deactivating the nanos?"

"I will get to that soon. We found clues as to the perpetrator's identity. Turns out it was the same person who planted the bombs, and as it happens, he worked at the store where one of them exploded."

Uriah rolled his eyes, although he'd be a filthy liar if he denied having been slightly unnerved at the time. "So you buy into the same theory Sabrina got all excited about. What convinced you?"

"It was not hard to figure out the role nanobots played in this, and suffice it to say an engineer at the TLTB, Vladimir Ivanov, confessed to conspiracy with the late George Thornton, a fellow underground – in more ways than one, it seems – nanotech enthusiast. Hence the signals."

He wasn't expecting that. "But why the bombings? Why'd they target me at all?"

"The bomb at the Bio-Bazaar likely served a dual purpose – to bury the evidence and to bury you. Robots planted them, although we are not sure how you managed to escape being killed twice. Considering you survived those days in the house, it is probable Mr. Ivanov did not intend to murder you at all."

Of course, otherwise he would've made similar attempts on Sabrina. "This isn't very convincing to me."

"We have a confession, Mr. Uriah, plus Mr. Ivanov's freeing you. You certainly cannot accuse me, as I would have no reason to force you to adopt a Libertas, considering the request I made of you earlier."

He was about to say he could've impregnated Sabrina under the influence before the transplant, but that could get him in further legal trouble. Unless... "I suppose Ivanov told you Sabrina was in there, too?"

"Yes."

"Did he tell you what happened inside?"

For the first time, Uriah heard Zolnerowich laugh. "He did. The quilts around your heads were a clever move. Yes, Mr. Uriah, I am aware of your and Sabrina's abnormal behavior in that house, and I know it was mostly Ivanov's doing, except for the drinking. Until we hear from Miss Lockhart, no charges will be pressed against you for sexual harassment, in light of the necessity of the drink for your survival."

He raised an eyebrow. "Does her word matter, considering Ivanov made me do it?" That sounded more callous than he meant it to, but now was the time to ask.

"He denies any role in that, but since this may just be deceit on his part, that is another reason you are exempt from blame."

Uriah cleared his throat. "Er, Governess, did Ivanov's report include anything I should know about?"

"If you are implying what I think you are implying, that is classified information, Mr. Uriah. All I am allowed to tell you is that which is pertinent to your arrest and that of your captor."

Hands folded under his chin, he knew she knew something. "Can I at least know where Sabrina is?"

"She is being sent on her way back here."

"You're not gonna have her raid a sperm bank?"

"No need. According to the reports I have been sent, she is already pregnant."

CHAPTER 16

Uriah tried to hide his anxiety. "Would the classified information have anything to do with the cause of the pregnancy?"

"Yes, but rest assured that you are not the cause. The truth is something far stranger."

He wasn't sure whether to think the precedent of highly strange things made that doubtful, or even more likely. "All right then, you got what you wanted." His voice faltered. "But you're making a mistake. Changing my brain doesn't serve any constructive purpose, because I'm not a threat to anyone who isn't a bigger threat to innocent people."

Zolnerowich went about her other business as if she hadn't heard Uriah, who was briefly frustrated before saying, "Y'know, I get it. I really do. You have more power and responsibility than any human alive, and the public'll feast on your nonexistent organs if you don't give 'em something to throw their moral outrage onto."

She froze, and as she returned to other occupations Uriah stumbled over his next words. "I'm the perfect target. Certainly more believable to the outsider than the fine, upstanding gentleman that is Isaac Livingston. Who, to make matters worse, isn't exactly a guy you can bring in and show them for closure as easily."

"Because he is dead."

"But you're better than this, Governess, and you know it. You don't need to scapegoat me to save your own skin, not when those people aren't necessarily the ravenous barbarians you assume they are."

Zolnerowich spoke with incredible contempt. "Drop the psychoanalysis, Mr. Uriah. I am not doing any of this for ulterior purposes, but for the fulfillment of my duty as a respectable leader who delivers justice. Give me one reason not to go through with your rehabilitation that _isn't – complete – horseshit._ "

There were no words. This was truly the end of the road, and the most terrifying part was that the whole fiction was almost making sense. He swallowed. "Fine. What if I take a different option? Like, say, I help the Lunar government figure out what caused the Dethroning."

"I see no reason to think you are more likely to find that than anyone else."

"Let me rephrase that. I already have a rough idea of the cause, it's the details I need to work out."

She was only very slightly impressed. "What is that rough idea, pray tell?"

"Could we discuss this in private? As in, Jane, would you excuse us?" Jane left without questioning, which killed a part of him. He chose his next words carefully. "I can't tell you yet, for reasons that would only make things worse if ya knew them."

"You expect me to let you go without even knowing what you are looking for?"

"I do, because for now I can give you more pragmatic reasons. Let me paint the picture for you clearly, Governess." He leaned back, hands interlocked behind his head. "I know Jane a lot better than you do, and to be frank, she's the greatest threat in the world to you right now. She's an emotional being whose sole purpose in life up to last week had been to serve a socially inept yet brilliant man named Marshall Patterson.

"But things are different now. She doesn't admit it, but Jane sees me like she used to see no one but Marshall. That I have his body now only cinches the deal."

"Just what is your evidence for this?"

"I was getting to that. Recall that Jane saved my life twice. Now, you know why she scares you. You're probably watching her outside this room with your screen right now. It's because she was made for Marshall, and she believes her loyalty is to him alone. To separate her from him is like getting between a potential martyr and his god. I'd go so far as to say her devotion to Marshall is more zealous than that martyr's, only she wouldn't die for him because she knows there's no afterlife for robots."

She now kept her eyes up, bringing a faint smile to Uriah's face. "Get to the point."

"That is to say, she would never do anything that didn't fulfill her duty to Marshall. Unless a golden calf came along." He leaned forward. "Zolnerowich, I am that golden calf. But there's a twist. Her god's been crucified. By whom, I don't know. But suppose she were offered by the golden calf an opportunity to rescue her god from the grave. Would she take it, if by doing so she had to commit idolatry?"

"I suppose it would."

"Right answer. So imagine someone like you comes along and attempts to rid me of my powers of resurrection."

"Which I am not doing."

"Imagine instead," he said with a raised voice, "that I withhold my powers of resurrection because I know that by doing so, I will pose the aforementioned threat to a certain Governess Zolnerowich."

"And that threat is...?"

He chuckled theatrically. "You don't think disarming Jane's hand-EM gun is gonna make her harmless, do you? She's no ordinary robot. Livingston couldn't control her like he could the other bots."

"You mean it could not control itself."

"Lady, I can't prove to you that Jane didn't hack those androids. You have her say-so on this matter, and I have the facts about what Marshall Patterson is capable of putting in his robot designs. But you don't have to believe me on that score to know what Jane is capable of, and that if she loses that one hope of getting Marshall back, it'll be World War Three."

"What is this 'hope of getting Marshall back'? Are you capable of necromancy, Mr. Uriah?"

"You could say that." Zolnerowich stared at him as if to question his sanity, but he continued unperturbed. "Only there's no magic involved. Did Mr. Ivanov tell you what he did with Marshall's brain?"

"He does not know about how Marshall's Libertas even got to you. He says there was another patsy involved, but he will not give us a name."

_So the puppeteer just doesn't want me to know about that. Wonderful._ "Suppose I find this brain, analyze it for the Dethroning source, and find a way to reverse it. Any technology powerful enough to kill almost everyone can probably revive almost everyone."

"I am on pins and needles. Uriah, I was not planning for this meeting to take so long. Either prove your case, or accept Neurehab so that the rest of us can rebuild our society."

He looked away, thinking. "Give me twenty-four hours. One day to look into this. If I succeed, I'll not only be able to keep Jane from blowing up in all our faces, I can also bring Livingston back – and everyone else – and we can pretend this never happened." _Except Sabrina will never be the same._

"I can also give you an hour to find the fountain of youth if you want it."

"Cut the crap, Governess." As if his voice at that moment had some compelling power, Zolnerowich looked up from the inspection to which she had just returned. "These are unusual circumstances, so I think I have the right to this one day. This isn't a request, it's a demand. You don't have a monopoly on the Lunar government."

Zolnerowich looked up, shrugged, and said, "Exactly twenty-four hours as of now, and you will require Good Angels."

"Fine, but I get to ask Jane for her help."

"She is out there. Good luck, Mr. Uriah." As she disconnected, the security bots seized Uriah and led him outside.

* * * *

"How do my eyes look?" he asked Jane.

"Very manly. Is everything done, officer?"

"Mr. Uriah is free to go, with twenty-three hours, fifty minutes."

They strode briskly down the halls to EPD's exit, this time with no intentions of disabling the entire robotic police force. Had they possessed biological bodies, the twilight air would've struck them as especially cold, yet Uriah was only now comprehending this other benefit of his transition into Transhumanity. Far from helping him sympathize with the Transhumans he hated, knowing what most of them deprived those who needed it of only intensified his animosity.

Jane had agreed to the proposition without hesitation when she found out that this could potentially reunite her with her beloved. It was the perfect way for him to repay his debts. When she asked Uriah where they were going first, he told her, "Back to Livingston's home. I need to check the machine."

"You mean that one your EM gun –"

"Yes, yes, that one. Jane, please, for this to work, I need you to say something only if you absolutely have to say it," he said with nervous emphasis. "Now, until we get there, I want you to tell me everything you remember about what happened when Livingston hooked you up to the Mindscape."

They hopped into an auto, which at Uriah's command began speeding toward 542 Stanley Way without a driver. Jane closed her eyes and began, "The first dream, if that's what I should call it, took me to Marshall's bedroom. He was there, and we started to do our thing, but... it wasn't the same. I guess it was like how it would be with anyone but the real Marshall."

As he'd suspected. Either Mindscapes were still very prototypical, or Marshall had been exceptionally paranoid about the prospect of Jane's cheating on him. Even with a simulation. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, lots. Once the fake Marshall realized I wasn't into it, the next one came. This time it wasn't in the bed. The virtual Marshall talked to me about the usual stuff he talks about, but I just didn't find it as interesting as I do with the real Marshall."

_Marshall Patterson, who_ were _you?_ "Whaddya mean by 'usual stuff'?"

"Stuff about vitrification, mostly."

Uriah did a double-take. "Vitrification? Are you positive that's what he was talking about?"

Jane nodded.

"Anything about nanotech?"

"Yep. I don't remember the specifics, though."

He set the autopilot to twenty miles per hour faster. "Jane, for the love of God, keep your mouth shut unless I ask you something, and I promise you you'll have Marshall back before ya know it."

It was going to be a short twenty-three and a half hours, knowing his luck.

* * * *

The telltale washing machine greeted them for all of one second before Uriah closed his vision to everything but the hemispherical device on the ground. "Jane, did Marshall tell you anything about this?"

"No."

"Did he say something about a machine that could activate trillions of nanobots at once? What about cryoprotectants attached to the nanos?"

"Nope and nope."

So Marshall had only told Jane enough about his scheme to indulge some hypothetical desire to have someone listen to his ramblings, yet not so much that she could spill the beans and accidentally land him in prison. He wouldn't be surprised if he discovered Marshall had called Jane "it" as well.

Uriah peered inside the hole with one eye, then, seeing nothing useful, he examined the machine from many angles. He knew he should be thinking hard about the problem at hand, but his deduction was obscured by the thought of what had happened to Sabrina. What could Zolnerowich be hiding? If it was his fatherhood after all, why the secrecy? At worst, he would feel guilty. Maybe she thought his knowledge of his paternity would make him more likely to want...

He stood, wishing for some sort of probe for the interior. Why was Marshall's doomsday device in Livingston's basement in the first place? Had he planned this, his own death? There was at least one way to find out. But first –

"Hey, cops, can ya hear me?" The Good Angels just might be useful, reluctant as he was to admit it. "I think I found something, but I need a –"

A voice in his head said, "A delivery android will be with you shortly, Mr. Uriah."

_It better be, with this time limit._ He turned to Jane. "Has Marshall ever displayed suicidal tendencies, Jane?"

She was, of course, repulsed. "No! Why would you ask such a thing?"

"You'll find out. I don't suppose Livingston led you to a video of your conversation with him?"

"No again," she sighed.

"Don't worry. Every answer helps. Do you remember what he said to you?"

"He told me that you killed all these people."

Uriah had almost clasped his hand over Jane's mouth, but it was moot by this point. That would look suspicious anyway, and if these next twenty-three hours went the way they were supposed to, his blunder would be rectified. "What else?"

"He told me that if I helped him, we could 'wake up' the world."

He knew a way? Or "knows," if I'm on the right track.

With no new information coming from Jane, they waited a couple minutes before the bot arrived. The probe was a minuscule piece of machinery equipped with a grapple and a wire that could stretch a thousand feet. Uriah fastened the grapple to the edge of the hole and commanded the probe to begin its inspection.

The grapple included along with its control panel a split screen for live viewing of all the probe's surroundings. For several seconds all he could see there was a rubbery lining of an exasperatingly long tunnel. At last the tube terminated at the mechanical brains, which appeared functional as if no electromagnetic pulse had fried them.

By some mechanism the tunnel must have converted his gun's pulse into energy not only harmless to machinery, but conducive to its sending a signal across the globe – and only across the globe, if Luna's collective survival was any indication. Just the notion of it reeked of magic, even keeping in mind that it had been years since he was in a position to know about the latest technological advances. Yet it was the best explanation he could conceive.

"Okay, that's as much as we'll find here. Next stop, EMFI."

Twenty-five minutes and a great deal of awkward silence later, Uriah found, in the room in which he had first met Sabrina Lockhart, the very sight he'd expected. That made it no less heart-sinking to see the place totally absent of Isaac Livingston's body.

* * * *

"Come on, where is he hiding this stuff?"

Having found no evidence of deep AI research in Livingston's home, Uriah had assumed it would reveal itself in the weasel's office. Clearly Livingston was careful about anything that could incriminate him, even postmortem. He'd done such a superb job of it that Uriah would've started doubting his judgment of Livingston had the body been there. That the body was missing made it easier to maintain his suspicions, but he could see why Livingston would do it anyway. If he had something to hide from Luna, either the body's fingerprints were a liability, or the lack thereof that rendered him illegally anonymous would have raised a few Lunar eyebrows.

"Keep your eyes peeled for anything you might expect to find in a room where someone stole a body and removed its brain," said Uriah as they entered Marshall's workplace. There was no stray cranial fluid or a copy of _Artificial Body Brain Transplants for Dummies_ , and Marshall, too, had covered his tracks thoroughly.

After five minutes' sleuthing he slammed his fist on the desk. "Jesus, how did he make so much line up perfectly with his case? Of course he's fulla shit and he knows it, but it's like I put half a puzzle together and it made total sense, then the rest of it doesn't fit _at all_."

Jane shrugged. "No one else believes you about this, Dennis, and after meeting Livingston I can't blame them."

He leered. "Sabrina believes me! And come on Jane, look at the facts. There's no body. If an android had moved it, you'd think Zolnerowich would've told us that. Who else does that leave? You think Thornton survived not only the Dethroning but also a bomb?" He started rummaging through the desk drawer for the third time. "Whatever the truth is, it sure isn't what you all have in mi–"

He found a Softsheet that read:

Memorandum

To: Marshall Patterson

From: Nancy Marconi

Priority: High

Date: 4/5/62

Re: E Wing Meeting

I expect all collaborators on Project Autopia to attend an urgent meeting in Room 526 from 8 P.M. to 11:30 P.M. tonight. Extremely important information has come to light. If you absolutely must excuse yourself from this responsibility, let me or any other supervisor of E Wing know ASAP.

April 5. Eight to eleven-thirty. Was he recalling correctly what Pat had said?

"Dennis? Found something?"

Uriah looked up, as if surprised to remember that Jane was there, and then buried his head in his hands. "I screwed up. Livingston was innocent." Could those words pass from between his lips? "There was no way he could've done it."

For another document demonstrated that Isaac Livingston had attended that meeting on April 5.

CHAPTER 17

"Ya hear me, moonies?" Uriah said, ignoring Jane's astonished reaction. "I get it now. I'm a guilty wretch, and when my time is up you have every right to mess with my brain. But until then I need you to give me this chance to redeem myself. I know what I'm doing. Trust me."

There was no reply, which he took as the equivalent of, "Okay, get to it instead of wasting your time."

"Jane, d'you know Marshall's password to his credit account on that virtual bookshelf doohickey?"

"Sorry, but no."

Poor Jane, whose creator couldn't trust her one iota. There went his idea to loot a book about the process of reverse-vitrification. What alternative was there?

The Good Angels said, "Mr. Uriah, Governess Zolnerowich wants you to return to Everett Police Department promptly."

_Stupid._ Of course they would catch on. But there was hope. Perhaps the only thing that had stopped him from considering this option wasn't stupidity, but ego. _I want to earn my redemption, dammit,_ he thought as he motioned for Jane to follow him outside the institute.

Collecting his thoughts, Uriah concluded that the E Wing meeting could most likely have concerned some discovery of a leak of Mindscape specs to a Russian manufacturer. If Marshall had worked on Project Autopia, it would be easy for him to design these machines so as to prevent exploitation of robotic memories. This also explained Livingston's knowledge of how to use them on him and Jane, yet the missing piece of the puzzle had always been not that triviality, but the logistics of Livingston's mastery over robots.

Had it indeed been Livingston behind the curtain? It wouldn't take exceptional abilities to program androids to do what they'd done at Goodsprings, but there seemed to be no airtight evidence that the resurrecting man had relocated all the robots from and to the southern Nevada area – which, along with what had transpired in the Amish house, did border on the uncanny. That, too, he couldn't be sure was Livingston's doing, and the Ivanov hypothesis was just as credible.

_Then what of the resurrections?_ he wondered as they returned to the car's back seats. It was possible that the pulse hadn't been powerful enough to subdue a Transhuman – after all, he'd never tested it on one – but he'd simply shocked the man into tumbling with his arrival.

That, plus the likelihood that Livingston had been protected from cryogenic doom by the same proximity that had guarded him, made for a more sane theory than bodily revival. He could've easily fooled Uriah into thinking he was dead, to protect himself from a man who had other weapons for all he knew. As for the "empty tomb," there was no reason to suppose the same mastermind who'd trapped him with Sabrina for days would be incapable of moving a cadaver. No obvious motive, sure, but the means were there. It all seemed to make more sense, even Livingston's humble abode, which fit nicely in the hands of a genuine philanthropist.

Just enough sense to sign Uriah's doom without eliminating that phantom of a possibility that Livingston was still out there, ready to make his life a living hell.

The commute ended swiftly. He didn't look Jane in the eyes at all as they approached the entrance, although he noticed still the effect the breeze had on her lifelike pseudo-hair.

While the door closed automatically behind them, ceiling lights revealed the presence of a familiar man leaning against the hall wall.

Himself.

His face brightened at the sight of the visitors. "Hey, it's Jane and my good man Marshall!" He strode towards Uriah to shake his hand. "Just kidding, of course. I know you used to walk around in this bag of bones."

"Well, this is surreal, Mr. Me." Uriah didn't return the kindly gesture. "Who are you and why've you taken my body?"

The stranger had no better luck being polite with Jane. He grinned and said, with a not-so-subtle indication of the robot, "Guess."

"Marshall, you chickenshit." He lifted a fist halfway before Jane held him back. "How could you do this to her?"

"Wow, we are clever!" Marshall evidently thought nothing of the insult he endured, as he took a seat and popped the cap of a Kinetic that had been on the nearby table. "Sit down, and we can discuss this like reasonable adults."

"Reasonable adults don't build robot lovers only to screw them over for almost a week, unless they happen to also be sadists. I have half a mind to kill ya right now, only –"

"Only you won't do that because if you do, Jane'll never be happy again. Will you?" he added to Jane, who was glancing back and forth between Uriah and Marshall, understandably confused by this brain switch. _She wouldn't be happy with you now, anyway,_ he thought, but he let Jane speak.

"I don't know." She looked at the ground. "I love Marshall, if that's really who you are, but I don't want you to do anything to Dennis."

"I don't see why you shouldn't, so long as I leave his – or my, I guess – body in good shape." He took a sip of concentrated caffeine. "What lies has this fella put in your head, Janie?"

" _Enough._ Marshall, if you don't mind, Jane and I would like to go report to Governess Zolnerowich in peace. I assume I'd be informed of any weapons you might have by now, so if ya know what's best for you, I suggest you follow us and we can discuss this with the Lunar survivors."

"Oh, I don't think so. Go ahead, try to contact your moon friends. You'll figure it out soon enough."

He got the hint. "So has it been you all this time? Cutting communications from here to Luna, bombing Goodsprings and Sloan, changing Sabrina's memories, forcing me out of _my own body_?"

"You could say that. 'Course, if I'm lying just to scare you, you'd never know, would you?"

He probably wasn't lying, but then that created the mystery of why he would come clean so bluntly. Uriah looked over his shoulder as Marshall said, "Locked. No one's talking to the government 'til I've had my say. Please, sit."

Silently swearing, Uriah took a chair. "What is it you want, Marshall?"

"I think you know that. You said it yourself, to Zolnerowich – Jane's cheating on me with you, and I can't have that."

Jane said, sitting, "I haven't been sleeping with him!"

"Yes, but Janie dear, you know this is how it starts. You helped him when there's no way that could have helped me."

Uriah raised his hand in indignation. "Yeah, Marshall, why don't you tell us why Jane needed to save me in the first place? Start with the reason you have for annihilating almost the entire human species."

"I never wanted this to happen, Dennis. Not now, anyway." He rested his hands on his knees. "You were the one who opened Pandora's Box in your primal rage."

"Don't pin this on me! You expect me to not have trusted the woman I loved, when she was crying – which she'd _never_ done before – and swearing she was telling the truth? Unnaturals gave us the finger every chance they could get, wasting our tax dollars to win some petty Space Race! To which you contributed, I might add."

"Hey, hey, let's set the record straight, here! The first people we were gonna send to the moon were the folks who would've died of impending natural disasters. On the moon, they'd be safer than anyone down here." Marshall waved his hand. "But this is all on the side. I suppose you wanna know why I made the machine in the first place."

"Let me guess. You're a sociopath."

"Ha! If only it were that simple. 'That guy does socially unacceptable things because he's an asshole, problem solved.'" _Socially unacceptable, yeah, that's the term!_ "I had no intentions of killing anyone. From what I know about you, you'd probably be more comfortable with that than I would. Nah, I was after something on the opposite end of the moral spectrum."

"Ah, 'the ends justify the means' kinda guy, are ya?"

"When the ends are a world in which every human can be happy with the love of a robot so human-like as to be indistinguishable from the 'real thing,' yes, I'd agree with that. As if you're a stranger to, ahem, dangerous ambitions yourself!" he laughed.

"I never harmed anyone because of my dream of immortality, and I don't plan to, now that I have the chance to realize it."

"That's what they all say, but the tougher your target is to hit, the more likely it is your arrow's gonna stab someone in the eye. Fortunately, my target was a pathetically easy one. When you're as familiar with robotics and life extension as I am, it's really a paint-by-numbers deal."

"Life _extension_?"

Another irritating smile. _Those're my facial muscles you're using, bub._ "Heh, I guess it does sound ironic. Do you know, Dennis, there are two million legally dead folks in cryogenic capsules, just waiting to be woken up in some heaven on Earth – or even on the moon, as it were?" That he glanced sideways out a window for the moon infuriated Uriah as he speculated what Marshall had probably done to Sabrina.

"I considered a slightly more modest statistic of that sort years ago, asking myself, 'Who says these people need to wait until their hearts stop, or their Libertas run out of energy, to have their brains vitrified?' The answer is the law, but that was the price I was willing to pay to move the human race forward and save precious lives."

Uriah rolled his eyes. "Not a very bright plan, what with a whole civilization on the moon you left unfrozen."

"That was where you threw the monkey wrench. My plan would've gone smoothly. The nanos would keep my brain functional for as long as is necessary to fix this mess of a world – deactivate and safely dispose of all nuclear weapons, molecularly manipulate the world's waste into every necessity needed to eliminate poverty, terminate any dangerous Singularities in the making. All worthy causes, but there was another reason, something you wouldn't really think of when coming up with a list of things to do when 'putting the world on hold,' so to speak."

Marshall nodded to Jane. "The perfect lover, not just for me anymore, but for every adult human being – indeed, the distinction of adults and children would break down in this new world. You already see it with the birth rate steadily dropping as more people trade their reproductive power for the benefits of a Libertas. Sounds iffy, but the instinct to propagate new generations would go the way of the dodo, too."

"I _wouldn't_ think of that, mainly because I already had Pat."

"Whom you lost because she lied to you. That's the problem with humans. You can't trust one unless it's yourself. I thought Jane would be immune to the causes of infidelity, but it seems I was too credulous. After I perfect the Jane AI, it'll be a matter of making each member of Jane's massive family a proper complement to their human."

A smile flooded his stolen face, eyes glazed over in love with his own idea. "Dennis, imagine what the world could be without all the sorrow, jealousy, anger, pain, and even _death_ that our present courting system is tied to! Had you possessed your own 'Jane,' you would never have felt compelled to seek vengeance on Livingston. Unwanted pregnancies would be a thing of the past, and people would devote to more important pursuits the time they would've wasted figuring out how to win the game of inter-human romance."

"I don't want to 'possess' anyone," Uriah spat.

"Right, that's why you stayed monogamous. Nothing possessive at all about restricting yourself and your partner with this relationship framework in which you own her sexuality and she owns yours."

"She doesn't own me."

"Yeah?" _Is that really how I look when I'm skeptical?_ "What did you plan to do when you found out Pat was dead?"

"Well, if you hadn't interfered, I would've kept some animals from starving."

"Just a coping mechanism. What next?"

"Like I said, I would've found a way to live forever."

Marshall leaned in for the kill. "And _that's_ just a way to prolong a life you know as sure as the sun rises will be miserable until you either bring her back, or find another volatile human to tie yourself to. It's madness, a never-ending cycle of surrender to this primitive dependence on someone you can only end up losing. Or, if you don't lose her, you and she lose your passion and your trust, which is even worse."

"All right, then, if you think your idea will solve this problem, why are you miserable with Jane? Why are you still losing her?"

"I never said my project was perfect. That's why I'm buying time with this 'Dethroning,' as the kids are callin' it these days. Beyond rewiring the human brain, which is bound to have negative repercussions, it's impossible to separate our species from the pain of loss. But what we can do is ensure that the loss never happens, not for hundreds, thousands, millions, _billions_ of years into the future. It's as Confucius said: cultivate the individual's well-being, and you produce a flourishing society."

He relaxed, looking Uriah in the eyes with the most sincerity he'd displayed since they met. "With a lot of effort, we really can get all the hope of heaven without the fear of God. It won't be easy, it probably won't even be as good as we'd like it to be, but dammit, we owe it to ourselves to give it our best shot."

"Who's this 'we'?" Uriah scoffed. "Don't try to paint this as something collective, not when you're putting nanobots inside people without their consent and turning their lives into a paused video game."

Marshall looked disappointed. "Ah well. Not like it'd be for the best to have someone as impulsive and delusional as you being among my first supporters. Let's see if the governess will be a little more receptive." He stood and led the way to the conference room. "And don't even think about tryin' to kill me or escape. Y'know the kind of robots that resisted your EM gun back in the cage? They're all over this place."

* * * *

"So you are Marshall," said Zolnerowich slowly with a nod to the Organic in the room, "and you are the reason Mr. Uriah is late to the meeting. Just why have you allowed us to believe that Mr. Ivanov was responsible for all this?"

Uriah was more concerned with why Marshall was so willingly admitting his crimes, but he afforded himself the opportunity to keep quiet and see where the guy was taking this. Marshall had told the same story to Zolnerowich that he had to Uriah, answering some queries the latter hadn't thought of at the time. In response to the governess's most recent, he took full blame for slanderous deceit on that matter, explaining it as a means to the end of delivering unorthodox justice to Uriah.

"I figured it would serve his conscience well to come to the discovery of Livingston's innocence gradually, after struggling to vindicate himself in your eyes. I don't expect you to sympathize with me when I say I did this largely because Mr. Uriah had usurped Jane's faithful love from me, but I tell you this if only so you may understand my motives."

_Yeah, like it's Jane's "faithful love" you want by this point, Machiavelli._ Uriah fought hard against the impulse to call Marshall's B.S. True, he really was to blame for Livingston's illicit death, but the claim that he'd crossed some line with Jane was without any merit.

All the same, he found it painfully difficult to focus on the matter at hand when _I am a murderer._

"Mr. Patterson, because of your dishonesty, an innocent man's mind has been irreversibly altered."

Zolnerowich wasn't helping.

"I never expected you to resort to such measures so soon."

"We only did so because Mr. Ivanov was so willing to confess without much interrogation. Did you coerce him into doing that?"

"Yes." He said this without a trace of remorse or hesitation.

"Now will you grant me the liberty of asking how you have not only survived what has killed all Earth-bounds besides Mr. Uriah, but also concealed yourself from the public eye for nearly six days?"

"I saw him days ago. In that body, I mean," interjected Jane with a point at Uriah's Libertas. "He was definitely dead."

"If I were to guess," said Uriah, "I'd say the answer to that mystery has something to do with what you probably called me here to talk about in the first place, Governess."

Marshall glared at him for his interruption, but said nonetheless, "He's right. Legally, Jane, I _was_ dead, but my brain was suspended in such a state as to be easily revived to consciousness with reverse-vitrification. In the event of an accident like that caused by Mr. Uriah last Thursday night, I programmed some nanobots to restore me."

"You have the means to return these people to life, right now?" said Zolnerowich with unprecedented attention to the conversation. "And you've withheld it from us all this time, when you've undoubtedly been able to inform us based on your nigh omniscience?"

Uriah was acquiring a fondness for the governess.

"Nigh omniscience that makes it quite easy to extort from you immunity to the law, yes."

"What happened to your pretense of the moral high ground back when you were talking to me, Marshall?" said Uriah. "I mean, I'm not above, er, questionable negotiations myself, but you're trying to cover up something that could've risked lives around the world."

"I'm still claiming the moral high ground, but the law and my ethics don't overlap fully. Not that I would change that, as I've never put my idea of ideal laws through thorough peer review, but I regret nothing I've done in the past week. The vitrified people will be fine, provided everybody cooperates with my wishes."

"You think you scare us?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"Mr. Patterson," said Zolnerowich, "are you under the delusion that you are the only person alive who can revive the vitrified?"

"I _am_ the only person who can do that, because I was the one who put them in their current state. Even if I weren't, I don't think you understand what you're up against, Governess – or the rest of you, for that matter. Throw me in the slammer all you want, hell, modify my brain so that I'm a total vegetable. It doesn't matter, because all those robots you thought were in Livingston's, Jane's, or Ivanov's hands are in mine. They'll still do what I want them to do even if tomorrow I wake up thinking I'm the reincarnation of Kurt Cobain."

"Will they if you die?" said Uriah.

Zolnerowich shot him a glare. "Let us not find that out. No one is executing anyone, especially not while we have no idea if Mr. Patterson is bluffing."

"I can answer both of those," said Marshall with a satisfied smirk. "Yes, the bots will still do as I've programmed them to do after I die irreversibly. Governess, if you need proof that this is no bluff, I must say I find it ironic that you would disapprove of capital punishment, in light of what you said to Sabrina Lockhart at precisely 5:32 P.M. Greenwich Mean Time on Saturday, April 8, 2062.

"And I quote: 'If I may imitate your earnest manner, destructive as the Dethroning was, I cannot say I do not appreciate its near elimination of the threat of the Singularity.' Your associates can fact-check me on that, as well as on Exhibit B, a plaque reading in Latin, 'Evil ideas die with evil people.'"

The governess's face was grave, but not yet resigned. "Have you hijacked _every_ robot on Earth?"

"More or less. All I had to do was plant the nanobots on them, like some sort of global pollination." Uriah figured this must've been the same way he'd infected all Earth-bound humans. Perhaps a few nanos were supposed to hitch a ride on the next shuttle to Luna, but their detonation came ahead of schedule.

"It took a nuclear holocaust's worth of preparation, months before doomsday, but after that it took just a signal – and radiation travels wicked fast, mind you. The reason it seemed like a slow process to your eyes was that you only saw the abnormal migration and communication loss, which I had to do in real-time. And as you guessed, I managed to achieve global robot manipulation within a minor number of hours."

"Just why were you moving the androids?"

"In my defense, that was so I could hurry the more vulnerable Organics to vacant cryo-preservative chambers. Most people probably could've stayed safe for revival without it, which is why I gave priority to the outliers I couldn't optimize my cryoprotectants for."

Of course he did. The cognitive dissonance was killing Uriah. "Okay, Marshall, before you declare yourself Ruler of the Free World, I need to know, Governess – what the hell has happened to Sabrina?"

"Would you like to tell him, your All-Knowingness?"

Marshall seemed uncomfortable for the first time, although only slightly so. "No, I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"I plead the Fifth."

Uriah punched Marshall square in the face, sending his own body tumbling. "You –!"

A sensation not more pleasant than a dozen brain freezes at once stung his head, compelling his hands to clench it and refrain from further blows to Marshall. All that existed was his artificial body, the throbbing pain, and Jane's distant cry: "Oh my God, he's dead!"

* * * *

"Who's dead?" said Uriah when the agony dissipated. The question was profoundly dumb, but he _had_ just suffered a brain injury.

"Mr. Uriah, just how many murders do you plan to have committed in a week?" said Zolnerowich, who was back to her screen on the desk.

Cursing at himself in his thoughts, Uriah looked at his own corpse and said, "He's pulling some strings here. There's no way that one punch killed –"

"Must you keep defending yourself?" She typed something at about one hundred twenty words per minute and continued in a faintly shaky voice, "If what you told me two hours ago is correct, the law is hardly your biggest threat at the moment."

His innards plummeted to somewhere in the Earth's mantle. Jane was shaking Marshall in a feeble attempt to wake him from a coma. He bit his lip and tried not to look away from the pathetic sight. "Jane –"

"Bring him back," she demanded with neither anger nor desperation, just insistence. "You can, can't you?"

"Jane, I think he did this to himself. There's nothing I can do."

"That's a lie. You just... didn't know your own strength. You can bring him back."

She wasn't blaming him at all. Responsibility made no difference, as long as she could have Marshall. And giving her false hope would only make things worse. "Okay, let's take a closer look at him."

Uriah waited until Jane had turned her back on him, thinking back to when he'd first met her. She had awakened like a human, so his chances of putting her to sleep in anything other than the corresponding way were slim. Notwithstanding, he scanned for an off button, to no avail, and joined her by the body before she could suspect anything.

"No pulse, but there doesn't seem to be any actual damage to the skull that could've killed him." He was only barely bleeding. Uriah tried to look as if he knew what he was doing, when in fact he was premeditating robocide. How would Marshall have programmed her? Unless he was comfortable with letting people shut Jane off easily, he'd probably made the process password-locked. Something only he would know.

The problem was that if Marshall really had killed himself on purpose, there was no reason to suppose he would leave a trail of crumbs to the secret to subduing Jane.

Everything else that Marshall had spoon-fed to Uriah had an underlying utility. Not killing him outright tortured him psychologically. Giving him the Libertas challenged his prejudices and allowed Marshall to impregnate Sabrina without his knowledge of this until after she'd left Nevada. This also created the torture of the "who killed Marshall?" scenario, the Libertas normally being suicide-proof. Letting Jane get him out of the house served the same purposes and permitted Marshall to examine her interactions with him further.

Uriah stepped back from his autopsy duty to consider the ultimate motive. Now it was clear. If Jane's hard-wired faithfulness to her creator wasn't truly hard-wired after all, the easiest way to test this was to separate the variables: perhaps the only reason she'd ever trusted Uriah was that he was capable of reuniting her with Marshall.

Currently that was impossible, which only raised the question of why Marshall would design an experiment whose results he could never evaluate by definition. Unless...

He stood, giving Zolnerowich a reassuring nod. Knowing perfectly well he could have terminated Jane right there and ended part of this chaos, he said, "Jane, I'm not gonna promise you anything, but I'll do my best to find a way to get Marshall back."

In fact, he had promised her that, but Jane, for better or worse, had forgotten it.

### PART 4

### CHECKMATE

" _There is a courage that goes beyond even an atheist sacrificing their life and their hope of immortality. It is the courage of a theist who goes against what they believe to be the Will of God, choosing eternal damnation and_ defying even morality _in order to rescue a slave, or speak out against hell, or kill a murderer..."_

– _Eliezer Yudkowsky_

CHAPTER 18

_What would Dad have thought about this?_ Sabrina wondered as she struggled against the grip of her robotic restraints.

_Nothing,_ a part of her insisted. _Livingston's been seducing you all this time because of your altered brain, and that this is your fault is exactly what he wants you to think. That's what they all do!_

The truth was she couldn't be sure that she hadn't brought this pregnancy on herself. Mind modification couldn't have compelled her to do it, after all, and if the cause was the same as that of Uriah's rum binge on Monday, there was no way of distinguishing between that method of compulsion and her own "free will." But if she was as dangerous either way, what was the point of guilt?

The original question applied not actually to that matter, but to how she chose to deal with the consequences. Kenneth Lockhart had never been a friend of technology critics, but Sabrina could just not take it any longer. Her life had gone downhill ever since some person too big for his britches had made that – thing – Uriah had shot, again with technology. Humanity had for centuries been feeding a flame that used to be a Pleistocene comfort, but could now only end up causing a wildfire.

That was why she couldn't let them put the embryo in an incubator. Not with that psycho Livingston on the loose. It was just... unnatural. And she'd made her choice. There was no turning back from the responsibility.

Yet she still hadn't cracked a single smile since, and she had no intentions of starting now. On the contrary, she was downright shaking in fear.

Case in point, the restriction of the androids was inescapable. They eventually had to resort to paralysis in order to carry out the will of those who would use the bounty of nature to break the law of conservation of freedom, if freedom was matter and rights were energy. Authoritarian as Zolnerowich could seem, Sabrina still found it out of character for her to use such desperate means for no good reason. She'd requested contact with a representative of Luna to explain herself, but she met only silence.

So now she was as much a slave to AI as to her passions, and with a gaze at the moon, Sabrina resolved to fight those masters as much as was humanly possible, without using one to slay the other.

* * * *

"Welcome to the Pioneer Saloon, Miss Lockhart!"

The doors behind her locked before she could register that this was definitely not an airport with a flight bound for Houston. She'd been too preoccupied with now having a non-bacterial life form inhabiting her body to deduce anything from the surroundings she had unconsciously observed. Sabrina had been thrust inside so fast an amalgam of many-colored flashes obscured her vision for a few seconds.

She jerked her head around and felt the sting of whiplash.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about what's behind you anymore," said the android with an _A_ on its chest, bringing her into a disarming yet firm caress and leading her into the heart of the building. "Nor about any of life's little pains. Here in Goodsprings, heaven itself is never beyond the grasp of someone looking for something better."

Its voice was abnormally amiable, even for today's robots. Like that of a reuniting old friend, only not on first-name terms. Still, Sabrina tried to wrench herself free, but due either to exhausted willpower or the android's charm, she didn't try very hard.

After the standard paralysis below the neck, she felt an electrode-like device affix to her temples as the robot guided her to the bed Uriah must have sat in. A crate big enough to contain an amputated lower leg lay in the corner. Clearly, if Livingston was going to have the best of both worlds, the solution was to make Sabrina a vegetable for nine months, presumably feeding her and the child with pills and the water needed to force them down.

That, or this was just merciful submission of a threat he was reluctant to kill, and he really did have no motive to propagate the species.

"Livingston, is that you?" she said just as the bot was about to press the button. She closed her eyes and tried to remain calm. "If it is, I'm not gonna play any more games with you. I just want a word, some chance to see where you're coming from."

It stopped. "What do you mean?"

"Why? Why the bombings, why the mind games, why –" She opened her eyes to a squint. "You did it, didn't you? The murders?"

"Technically, it was Uriah. You knew that. But this Livingston fella isn't responsible in the sense you mean, either."

"Who are you?"

The android leaned in slightly, hovered its finger closer over the button, and said, "Marshall Patterson, and don't you forget it."

In perhaps the longest second of her life, her eyes opened wide at the finger's movement as she cried, _"Peace!"_

* * * *

Directly below Sabrina was a gargantuan ball of shining gas, collapsing in on itself and erupting outwards with a burst of color. The blast enveloped her with all the rush of energy yet none of the disintegrating heat.

All that surrounded her, all that blustered in a stellar sandstorm as if passing through her atoms, was a wave of various elements as she had never seen them before. It seemed to literally take her breath away.

A hand glowed on Sabrina's shoulder.

"Glorious, isn't it?"

The hand was joined by a humanoid figure that appeared like a section of the stardust flying into a distinct position bit by bit, as if camouflaged. It had no face, yet, androgynous as it was, its shape was as perfectly beautiful as any body could be non-sexually. It was suspended in a Jesus pose, given the absent gravity.

"It's not real," she said when her voice finally returned. "Neither are you."

"It – and I – can be as real as you want them to be. If that's what makes beauty true for you, then so be it." Her temperature skyrocketed for a lightning flash's time.

Sabrina cursed up a storm.

"You see my point. You'll never have total reality when you wanna see the process that gives birth to the solar systems themselves. Fact is stranger than fiction, but it's also more depressing." The last of the star-stuff blew away, sticking it to physics. Now Marshall was a mostly black entity spattered with some red, yellow, white, blue, and orange, flying around behind Sabrina. She turned to see him outlined against a gas giant close enough to monopolize her whole field of vision.

"Why do you want me to see true beauty? Couldn't you keep me occupied as easily with some kinda torture, some inferno?"

"I just did, for a split second. Those lights are nature's levels of hell. But if you'd prefer something like this..."

They warped onto a planet orbiting the same star as the first one. A volcano, prevailing her view of the surface, vomited lava in a spanning Independence Day sparkler against a backdrop of sulfuric acid clouds. The CO2-dominated air cooked her skin until her cry of pain earned Marshall's pity.

"This is Venus."

The translucent being nodded, resting his arm on Sabrina's shoulder as she recovered. "I fear this is precisely what Earth is destined to become. The runaway greenhouse effect evaporates the oceans and bakes whatever life hasn't been polluted to death."

"It can't," she said as they blinked over to a clearing in a forest whose canopy let only the slightest specks of sunlight reach the ground. "I won't let it!"

"Is that right?" Marshall sat cross-legged, and though he had no eyes, his gaze had the same soul-penetrating effect a human look tends to have on a liar. Soon, however, he relaxed. "Maybe you will honor that promise. If so, it's a wonderful ambition – the only one that could drive me to these drastic measures."

He read her puzzled look. "Look around you, Sabrina. It's soothing, pure. I dare say, divine. Not technology, but its human masters, have ravaged it. We did not learn. We did not listen. We did not exercise control over our silicon servants, and in a spiritual sense, we came to serve them. Do you see where I'm taking this?"

"Yes," Sabrina breathed.

"They call people like us, people who dare to challenge humanity's dominion over what nature has created equal to us – they say we're romantics. Anti-progressives. Loons, at best." He whisked them to a mountaintop enshrouded in snow, upon beholding which Sabrina almost couldn't breathe in her awe. "And they just might be right. But that doesn't make our vision any less profound."

_So why are you ravaging the human factor of nature with your nanotech?_ she thought, but the tranquility of it all silenced her. Besides, she had a plan. No way was he going to subdue her spirit.

"This is why I'm not leaving you to roast indefinitely on Venus. If I did that, we'd both lose. I wouldn't have someone to help me stop this planet from killing itself. Uriah's a lost cause, and the people you lived with on the moon are so out of touch with the cosmic perspective of things, I couldn't rescue their minds if I tried. You have a connection to the natural order that even I lack."

"Yes, er, about that... Marshall, do you mind me asking if you have a brain?"

He chuckled as the summit turned into a beach, the chill into sunbeams. "Well, you sure do! Yes, I have surrendered my physical body for the second time in my life, but I still live on. That's why your little peace treaty wasn't much help."

"Oh." She looked down in disappointment, seeing how her hair and clothing had changed to fit the scenery. _Good._

"What's wrong?"

"It's just that, well, I wanted to..." Sabrina faced the ocean-blue specter with the most convincing look of longing she could muster. "Marshall, it's just so sad that you've never known true love with a human. I know about Jane. She sounds magnificent, but can she ever replace a person?"

He sat speechless for a while. "I have known love. Unconditional love, even. That's the kind of love you can only find in a family. But I'm still a human in mind, in the only sense that matters, and humans are frustratingly stupid creatures. We think we'll get the most happiness from relationships with people we can least trust – 'lovers.' And we're right. We just don't seem to get as many endorphins as we should from those who really will love us forever." He started to transport them again.

"No, don't," she begged. "Can we stay here?"

Marshall shook his head. In a second they were in a car at about the same hour of night as they were in reality. Rain poured with unparalleled intensity. They were clogged in traffic that remained stationary as far as the eye could see both ways, at least in the brief moments the windshield wipers relieved them of the blindness to the outside. Sabrina had a throbbing headache, and the vehicle smelled like a messed diaper, probably because there was a shrieking baby in the back seat.

"We'd most likely never have to live through this," said Marshall from the passenger seat, "but if we did, would you love me here as much as if we were both looking at a glistening sea?"

_Well played._ She took her hands off her skull to face him. "Yes."

"You're lying, but that's okay. I didn't expect you not to. That's why I made Jane. She can give me the best of both kinds of love, not despite her inhumanity, but because of it."

There were so many things she could tell him. That he was a coward, that he missed the whole point of trust by putting it in someone who couldn't make free choices, that by helping Uriah Jane had betrayed him anyway, that the joy of love was in giving it rather than receiving it.

But prudence took over. "I may be lying now, but if you give it enough time, I could say yes honestly. That's only if you're willing to do the same."

"Oh, I am, believe me." Now Sabrina found herself in the same car, but it was broken down and stranded on the side of a dusty road. Rolling down the windows didn't help make the triple-digit Fahrenheit temperature any more bearable. She pined for water, but it existed only inside her and in her sweat. The infant was asleep, which was only as comforting as she imagined it to be.

"If you are, then tell me, can you feel this? Are you suffering with me?"

"I guess you'll just have to believe me when I say I am. If you don't, then you're just proving my point."

She looked at him lazily, thinking. "I'll trust you if you show me the body that's doing the suffering. Right now you're like a ghost."

He showed it, and she embraced it.

* * * *

"Marshall, is this really you in here, or is the person I'm talking to as fake as I am right now? I mean, when you said you 'still live on' without your second body, is this what you live as? Some kinda avatar?"

He'd been kind enough to take her somewhere a little less mundane. In fact, it was an underwater park her mother had brought her to when she'd been in elementary school. Tense as her relationship with Cheryl McAllister had been – "I love your father, sweetie, but the day I take his last name is the day I move to London and use words like 'jocosely'" – Sabrina would grow a Pinocchio nose if she denied that some of her fondest memories were tied to that day.

"Who says you're not an avatar right now? What else could you be?"

He was being dodgy, but Sabrina had convinced herself to be as relaxed and non-confrontational as she needed to be. She _had_ earned a break to admire the natural wonders she truly did want to preserve, after all. "Even heroes need a little time to recharge their sanity" – that was another nugget of Cheryl's wisdom, ironically confirming itself now that it was too late for Sabrina to let her know it.

_Assuming you even are a hero,_ her superego told her as she gave Marshall another warm touch. But she hadn't really caused the _Strange_ disaster, and even if she had erred, in the best-case scenario she was going to amend that choice by breaking this circle of fear and extortion.

Unfortunately, she'd never believed that good deeds could somehow counterbalance an evil past, and to do so now would be dishonest.

"Sabrina? Did someone disconnect you?"

Her eyes jerked upward, though she took care to keep the embrace intact. "What?"

"You're awfully quiet, is all."

"Oh, for a second I thought you were admitting you _are_ an avatar in this place."

"You're up to something. I know that much."

She followed his stare to a cuttlefish that blended in with a green reef. It was just as she remembered it, of course. "So are you, but I don't mind. You could argue everyone is 'up to something' when they do anything, and people have gotten this far trusting each other no matter the ulterior motives."

"You sure know how to handle suspicion," Marshall said as he faced her with a broad smile. "But we really oughta get to business."

Sabrina saw her reflection peripherally in the ample window space, and based on his look and what he seemed to have done with subtlety to her appearance, "business" was hardly his priority. "Is that right?" she said, stroking her hair.

He stood and strode to the see-through wall with hands behind his back, leaving Sabrina more than a little embarrassed at the wasted effort. _Peel back the layers. It's your only hope._

"I appreciate the gesture, Sabrina, I really do. It doesn't take a genius to see what you're doing, and were I a weaker man I would respond in kind to your advances even with that knowledge."

He stuck his hand through the glassy substance to feel the flow of the water. "But I'm not weak. I have a mission, part of which is to ensure that no human need ever sacrifice their brain or their virtues for their heart's sake. You can understand, can't you? As someone whose heart led you to hate your mother, even when you knew better than that, rationally and morally?"

She averted her gaze. "Just how much do you know about me, Marshall?"

"Only as much as you let me know. With your thoughts, I mean."

She let him continue, hiding her unease.

"You think it's creepy. Naturally. Humans have evolved to think in secret for so long, only divulging what thoughts we've desired to. I don't mean to change that any more than I wish to crush the human heart. I only want to make it so that we all _desire_ to share every thought that flits through our collective consciousness, to manufacture food for the heart that doesn't poison its consumer. This is something else people denounce as foolish idealism, but that's only because they're human and they resist change, unless they think of it themselves."

So if he really does come to have faith in me, I'll know it when he shares his thoughts with me.

"Well, if it helps, I trust you with my thoughts. And..." She got up and turned him around by the shoulders. "I guess it's no use hiding it from you."

"You were trying to get me to let you out of here by making me love you. It won't happen."

"Right, because –"

"You're a lesbian. At least, you identify as one."

Sabrina looked to the side. "I was gonna say because you want to keep me in here, but yes. I wasn't very convincing, was I?"

Marshall smirked and led her back to the bench. "It made no difference to me, until I learned that your interest was fake. I won't make you do something you're uncomfortable with, especially when it won't help you out anyway." There was a look in his eyes.

Pity.

"I wish it didn't have to be this way, Sabrina, I really do. You want to live a normal life again, to find a way to fill the hole your father's death left in you. You're afraid of the things I could do to you in this place. You hate me, you think I'm selfish." His sympathy turned to a blank look of pure knowing. "You want to kill me."

She hid her face. "No, I don't."

"Sure you do." Marshall folded his arms, and his eyes seemed almost exhausted. "It doesn't take a Mindscape to know what you feel sincerely. Whether anyone likes it or not, we live in an age where our sciences have collected so much information about the brain that one person can know another's mind – better than she knows it herself."

"Then maybe we should change that." Sabrina still avoided his stare in favor of her own face. It wasn't vanity, but a compulsion to confront this artifice, that drew her to it. _That's not me._ The image of Uriah in Marshall's Libertas returned from the recesses of her memory. _That's not Dennis._

"I suppose you think we should change our view of human bodies as mere homes for our minds, no?" A tattered book with a red ribbon bookmark popped into his palm. He held it so as to reveal the title – _Godly Simplicity_. "You found this after Uriah passed out. It must've pained you to perform the transplant, having read such a confirmation of the doubts you've always had about the robotic age. Why'd you hide it from him?"

"The opportunity just never came up."

"You don't say?"

Sabrina and Uriah as they had appeared Tuesday night materialized in front of her. He said, "But I'll need a wedge in case this works, for your sake."

Her phantom rejoined, "You're a Transhuman, remember? You could out-box almost any Organic in the pro leagues."

As they disappeared, Marshall shook his head. "You can't bullshit a bullshitter, Sabrina. This little tome would've made a perfect doorstop."

Sabrina scowled, trying by this point to suppress every zygote of a hateful thought about this man who was not only confronting her about her beliefs, but who'd forced her to all but sell herself for some hope. "Okay, okay, I was just afraid of his judgment."

"And you hate that, just like you hate me even more for exposing your lies. That's how it starts, like how a child hates learning valuable lessons from her meanie parents. Believe me, I know." He laid his chin in his hand. "But it'll get better. You'll get used to it like humans do with everything else, and when you do, you'll wonder how you ever lived without this level of trust – of liberating nakedness, so to speak. Not only that, but you'll be ready to know my mind as intimately as I know yours."

Marshall approached the wall again. "I'm gonna sleep with the fishes. Literally. If you wanna get some rest, too, go right ahead. But considering you don't need it, if there were ever a time for you to try to get out, this would be it. Take your time, and good luck."

CHAPTER 19

Sabrina knew it was pointless to attempt escape, which was why she tried to sleep on the bench as soon as Marshall took the plunge. Apparently avatars can retain insomnia, however, so after half an hour she picked up _Godly Simplicity_ to find the only refuge available now.

Its pages were mostly a blur of ink, though some lines that stood out in her memory were clear:

The degeneration of man starts when he ties himself to that which he could lose yet keep his identity.

If Christ found a way to live the most joyful, fulfilled life possible in a world devoid of robots and mind-altering methods, who are we to build our society around these unnecessary amenities?

The human mind can quickly acclimate to any material – but not spiritual – environment, thus it stands to reason that the wise human ought to aim for the bare minimum materially, the maximum spiritually.

All profound axioms for her new life, but what good did it all do her now? According to what rudimentary knowledge of the Gospel she'd gleaned from the book, Christ need never have feared an omniscient person because the only such person was his father.

She threw it at the floor and joined it there, supine.

It was obviously a test, but she was ignorant of which questions to answer in order to pass.

Grasping at straws, it briefly occurred to her to make a murderous attempt that Marshall wouldn't know came from her if it failed. But that was futile, practically and ethically. She'd already tried lies and exploitation of lust. Violence, even if against something that might not be "real," wasn't likely to be any more efficacious, and it would cost her soul.

After a prayer that was one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent desperation, she got up to do what she normally did when reason failed her. Sabrina went to the spot Marshall had occupied near the wall, closed her eyes, and let herself fall through the barrier.

It worked.

She breathed without truly respiring, letting all the stress and fright float to the top. Still blinding herself, she swam for the first time in over a dozen years. Synthetic sea creatures brushed past her, and without worries of drowning it was like being in zero-g all over again.

_This is absurd,_ she thought as she drifted alongside a shark after identifying it by touch, _but it's all I can do._

Eyes now open, Sabrina scanned in vain for Marshall. A minor trench to the east caught her eye – perhaps he'd retreated through it. She positioned her feet on a wall of the park and, scaring away a school of tiny fish, pushed off into the unknown.

Seeing no human life ahead, she figured it best to keep advancing blindly. She had always liked having some time to think in the water. Would the effects of pregnancy afflict her even in this dream world? Just what had happened in those hours before she met Uriah, if the sabotage was a lie? Was Uriah okay? Was there a moon in this universe?

_At least I can answer that one._ Sabrina changed her direction to skyward.

Dozens of thin spikes pierced her ankle.

As she turned to examine the source of the pain – and the cloud of blood that obscured it – Sabrina felt her air getting scarce. Water flowed in through her nose, intensifying the abrupt sense that she'd crossed the boundary between surreality and reality.

All the while a voice was whispering to her fading consciousness, "You failed."

* * * *

"Yes, Sabrina, there is a moon after all."

She was suspended on a watery surface, black as the night sky, that stretched forever in all directions so far as she could see. Marshall was sitting in profile on a perfect white circle that couldn't be the moon, for not only the obvious reason, but also because it was in the wrong phase unless she had slept for days.

But the lingering pain precluded her from challenging him, even if that were smart to do to someone with godlike power over her.

"You made three mistakes," he continued without looking at her. "First, you thought of killing me, if only briefly. I don't care how soon you dispelled the thought. That it came to you at all disturbs me greatly. It's treason against our species."

She began at this remark to monitor her mind, but of course this was as hopeless an endeavor as telling oneself not to think of Dostoevsky's polar bear. "You're still having those thoughts, and that's natural. I'll only punish you when you freely put yourself in the state of mind that entertains such notions." _Freely? What does that even mean anymore?_

"Maybe there's something to that," he said with a stilted laugh. "Anyway, your second sin was going somewhere you ought not have gone. You weren't to follow me, not to a place you couldn't remember. Did you notice anything strange about the trench? Did it appear distorted the farther in you went?"

"I wasn't looking when I went in farther."

"Interesting." Marshall dragged this word out syllable by syllable, stroking his chin as he faced Sabrina. "You weren't looking. You need to learn, dear, that living in a world that seems harmless gives you no license to be inattentive. That our world doesn't recognize that is why I have to train you this way at all."

" _Train_ me?" Sabrina sat up, causing her to fall into the abyss. What felt like a giant hand – perhaps Marshall really was sitting on the moon – snatched her out of the fluid and laid her in her previous position. The hand was gone by the time she got her bearings.

"You didn't think I'd put you there like that if you weren't supposed to stay, did you? Yes, I'm training you. Or maybe 'reprogramming' is the better word. Is that unsettling to you? It may be, but it will become easier to accept once you also accept that we're all robots at heart – slaves to our passions, our genes."

Sabrina scoffed. "I thought you were better than this, Marshall. Now you pull this cynical malarkey."

"Hear me out, please. This really isn't that revolutionary an idea. It's just something people have denied for millennia because that's what humans do. Not androids, though. I love them for that, Sabrina."

Marshall was gazing somewhere beyond the rock on which he sat, while Sabrina was trying to pinpoint what felt so odd about that statement. "They're as honest about how deterministic their lives are as they are about anything else. As long as their slavery leads them to the satisfaction of whatever desires they may have, they don't mind this kind of bondage."

"Is Jane okay with being your slave?"

A look of loving remembrance spread across his face. "She's as 'okay' with it as a being can be. Why?"

"Because submission to you is what you designed her to desire."

"Exactly. When the slave likes servility, everybody wins. The problem is humans don't want to become happy slaves, and I'm okay with that. I want us all to be happy masters, and that begins with _learning to be_ the sorts of smart masters that can prevent Earth from becoming the wasteland I showed you before."

He drifted toward her in little time, as if he had been sitting on a balloon within Earth's atmosphere the whole time. "Smart masters prepare themselves against the Singularity. They learn the hard way how to view themselves the way they truly are, just as a smart soldier learns the art of war with pain. Would you rather I planted these lessons and desires in your brain against your will?"

"No, but I'd prefer it if you gave me a reason to think I need to learn your 'lessons' before you taught them with force." Her malicious face soon turned to one of pained disappointment. "Marshall, why'd you have to do things this way? It would've been so much easier to persuade me into freely joining your cause if you'd just presented the idea peacefully, and if you hadn't silenced the vast majority of humans. I think you'll find people a lot more receptive to rational argument than you've given them credit for."

He grabbed her by the neck with both hands and thrust her into the murky water. Sabrina resisted, but it didn't stop him from keeping her submerged for ten seconds, at the end of which she gasped and fought back tears. Her sinuses were clogged and faith itself was failing her.

"That was for spouting idiocy – and to demonstrate my point. When was the last time you ever heard of a human changing their mind, out of pure intellectual honesty, on an issue that challenges their deepest ingrained cultural indoctrinations? You said it yourself to Uriah: people aren't rational. Now think of the last time someone did something against what they had so far believed or valued, not because of reason, but out of fear."

"Fear doesn't work either! Don't you get it, Marshall? Humans respond best to trust!"

He looked ready to spit something else vitriolic while further displaying his ownership of her, but he closed his eyes and lifted Sabrina to sit across from her. This left her an equal, despite dripping wet and almost cowering.

"Sabrina, if nothing else, I hope you can learn that trust _is_ fear. Fear of the reality of human of volatility. Fear of social ostracism because people don't like distrustful fellows. Fear of fear."

"Fine!" She collected herself. "Call it what you will, but it's still better than the kind of fear you're using. Don't expect me to do your bidding when I get out of here."

"When you get out of here, eh?" Marshall took her hand and helped her up, lying on his back when she stood. "All right. I can make that happen." She did not look convinced. "Oh, don't be suspicious. If you want trust, I can show you trust."

"No, you can't. Even if you do let me know what you're thinking, that might still be a lie. You say you 'learned' this whole philosophy, which makes it hard to believe you aren't just hiding your thoughts in some database I can't access." Sabrina could not resist sending him underwater with her foot. It was wrong, she knew it, but it was all she could do to keep from cracking.

When he surfaced, he pleaded, "Sabrina, you don't understand. I've already told you something I would never tell someone I didn't consider special. You'll see what it is soon enough, but you have to have faith in me."

"Just how gullible do you think I am, Marshall? I'm in a Mindscape, but you aren't as far as I can tell. My mind's an open book, yours isn't, and the only reason I have to trust you is that you're letting me beat the pus outta you." The hardcover book appeared in her hand, and she threw it at his face before submerging him again. "And even _that_ could just be you trying to get me to betray my virtues."

Sabrina let him fake looks of agony under the surface for longer than she had intended. _Emily Dickinson, eat your heart out._

Telekinetically, she gave him some air. It was the most pathetic sight that had ever disgraced her vision, and in her fit of reptilian brain loathing, she wanted to keep seeing it. She knew she had to stop, that this was what he wanted, but her neocortex seemed to disappear. Wasn't indulging in what she wanted the height of rationality, after all?

Marshall's eyes bulged as she magicked him into the air and shot him like a dart into the lunar target. His bones broke one by one in mid-flight.

_He can't feel it, and that makes it all right._ She breathed heavily, waiting for impact. _So why is he letting me do this?_

At last the virtual body's force broke the light-reflecting rock. Sabrina's heart sank as much as the shards and Marshall did, for at that moment she realized that her ire had destroyed the moon itself, such as it was. Her home, the lifeblood of all beauty in her past – all in pieces, now sending waves of the void-like stuff below and around her.

Sabrina didn't attempt to avoid them, nor did she flinch as they encompassed her. It was the only way out, not suicide, but a sacrifice. Whatever Marshall had wanted her alive for, he'd had some reason, and she refused to afford him the satisfaction.

* * * *

When Sabrina saw herself back in the Pioneer Saloon, her pregnancy seemed to have advanced at least eight months.

Yet it didn't feel like December, much less as if she'd undergone two-thirds of a year asleep.

_At least I'm alive._ She looked around the room, disoriented. The androids were gone, but the Mindscape and its connectors remained, with the latter still on her head. She got up to turn off the device before severing its ties to her, lest she die a cruelly anticlimactic death, but it was already deactivated.

Had she spent the majority of this time in some dead limbo, only to be awakened by an anonymous savior? The alternatives failed to account for her little tenant's incredible growth, unless Marshall hadn't died in there and was just now freeing her in time for the birth.

If someone else had pulled the plug, they hadn't bothered to give her clothes more suitable for this altered figure. She had to steady herself on the tables, bars, and stools on her way to the door, feeling just about ready to retch as she did so.

Sabrina stopped, remembering what she was up against, and turned back to the bed. Marshall had been one step ahead of her – there was no blanket, as Uriah had had. So her mind was totally vulnerable. She turned the rusty knob.

Just her luck. It was pitch black outside, with no vehicles in sight. Not that she could expect any better from a ghost town, but this cast doubt on the "Prince Charming waking Sleeping Homely" hypothesis. Uriah had mentioned robots around here, but even if they weren't locked, they were likely absent if she was to trust the story of the robot round-up. _But then, you weren't going to put your life in the hands of those ticking techno-bombs anyway, were you?_

She had to find Uriah. It was possible he had an EM gun with him, and even barring that, as much as she hated to admit it, a "young" woman in her third trimester of pregnancy could be a lot more comfortable with a Transhuman to defend her.

No.

A part of Sabrina told her, as she staggered down the dusty trail toward one of the exits out of Goodsprings, that this wasn't about her comfort. It never had been. It was about God, a lord she'd only recently learned of, but to whose providence her whole past seemed to attest. That providence was taking her towards something, and unless there had been some fatal flaw in her reasoning or her intuitions, that something could not be reached on the silicon train.

But how to know with reasonable certainty that the "sacrifice" she'd made was, or would prove, a truly noble one? What if it was just foolhardiness, seeing a motive in Marshall's deeds that wasn't there? God regrets a coward as much as he does a promoter of technological materialism, and was her rationalization of what was at heart just giving up so brave?

There was more than one life she was risking, after all.

Less than a mile later, Sabrina sat for a rest. _Who am I kidding? There's only one brave option for me, and that's to keep going._

She turned her eyes to the moon. A waxing gibbous. "Wait..." she muttered aloud. She knew her moon phases, and in light of the spring-like atmosphere, this was too great a coincidence.

Sabrina looked back. Yes, it seemed plausible. Nothing she'd seen in the past couple dozen minutes could not have been a fabrication from her memory. Why should she have expected otherwise?

The real Sabrina had never left the saloon.

* * * *

"Sabrina Lockhart, is that you?"

Jane's crimson locks and stunning eyes were just as they had been in the videos from the Amish house, yet its face was as devoid of happiness.

"You need to get out of here," the android said as it helped Sabrina up and guided her out of the Super 8 motel room. "Don't you know it's not safe to stay in places where robots could trap you?"

She released herself from Jane's grasp and stepped away. "It's also not safe to be around a robot like you, who has no problem blowing up space shuttles." That Jane was taking interest in her well-being lent more credence to her overall suspicion, which had led her to see no harm taking a sleep that could not kill her, even if the building were not robot-free. As such, Sabrina wasn't ready to take any chances with this bimbo, even if the reason for its presence wasn't clear.

Jane looked down. "I never did that. Zolnerowich would terminate me if she heard me saying this, but I don't care. She'll never bother me again."

"You killed her?"

They stepped out into the brisk April morning of Uriah's homeland, the artifice of which Sabrina noted was impressively vivid, rudimentary as her experience of the area was. Sprouted out of the barren land was the metallic vegetation of an industry just barely entering the robotic age. Marshall hadn't neglected the details of the animal survivors' noises. Perhaps if the situation had permitted leisure, she could've found evidence of Uriah's failed mission at the FHS.

"No. I just shut her up when I got sick of her distracting Uriah from helping me get Marshall back. She wanted Uriah arrested when his twenty-four hours were up."

Brilliant. It was the best way to not have to concoct a story about so unpredictable a persona as the governess, while feeding Sabrina a tale of Jane's exploits that she wouldn't find suspicious. If she hadn't caught onto his ploy, that is. "So why help me? I can't resurrect Marshall."

"But you slept with him."

She tensed up, staring more intently straight ahead. "How'd you know that?"

"Dennis told me." Jane held Sabrina back and peeked around the corner of one of the ubiquitous New Age centers. "Safe."

Sabrina stayed rooted to the sidewalk, arms crossed and a little heated. "What's it to you if I did? I mean, yeah, you probably wanna claw my eyes out for that, but obviously there's something stopping you."

"Well, Dennis figured this wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing," it said with another yank of Sabrina's arm toward its previous goal. She flushed. "Didn't Marshall tell you anything important when you –?"

"Now just wait a moment!"

Sabrina freed herself and jabbed her finger in the middle of Jane's chest. "Let's set the record straight, 'droid. I'm not about to let myself get pushed around by some psycho's lifelong prostitute, especially not one who would revive that psycho. He's not dead, by the way."

"I knew that, I just meant bringing him back where he could be with me." Its voice was small and broken as it said this, looking down without a word in defense of its dignity. _It's not human. Remember that._

"Listen, sweetheart, Marshall doesn't want to be with you as much as you think he does." Sabrina matched the robot's presumption with a stroll back to the Aquarius Circle.

Entering, she found a cozy room, pervaded by everlasting incense, with constellation-speckled walls and a tarot reading table. To the left was a steep spiral staircase whose banisters featured three-dimensional symbols of the Zodiac. According to a calligraphic sign, it led to a channeling sanctuary. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes so far back into her head they would get stuck there.

The chimes connected to the door sounded. "That's a lie. Marshall loves me more than anything or anyone else."

"Right, that's why he devoted all this time to trying to coax me over to his side." In the upstairs landing, Sabrina's eyes drifted to a lone flame flickering at the tip of a stubby candle. It appeared to be the last survivor in a ring of lights concentric with a floor painting of an elaborate flower. "True love waits, while one of the lovers is stuck in a Mindscape with the mistress."

"What?"

"This isn't real, didn't you know? Which is why I'm checking this place. See just how good your beau is at making fake worlds. He really got the whole New Age aesthetic down, especially the long-lasting candle novelty. I've always suspected those were some sort of ironic technological trick. What do you think?"

"What're you talking about?"

Sabrina opened the drapes and sat on the floor to think, unfazed by Jane's denial. "There's gotta be something he couldn't simulate, that I'd know was a fake, but anything I could spot he would know ahead of time by looking inside my mind. There's the rub."

"Sabrina, this is real life."

"Wanna test that?"

It appeared to have gotten the hint, looking warily at the candle-holder from which Sabrina was removing wax. "You're not afraid of me?"

"Dream on. If you're right, then you're powerless against an Organic, and the world would be better off without someone of your blind loyalty." _And if you're wrong, then you're as dangerous as Marshall wants you to be._

Jane raised its arm slightly. "Sabrina, I'm not fighting you. Please, just tell me what you know about Marshall. I can help you get to somewhere safe for the baby if you do this for me."

"I'd prefer to keep you at no less than a mile's distance from it, thank you." She grabbed a pointed candelabrum while ascending, not letting Jane out of sight. "But you won't let that happen, so I'll do the questioning here. What do _you_ know about your creator?"

"Nothing that could help you." Jane stepped back, its palm now aimed at Sabrina.

She'd expected nothing better, but it was worth a try. "All right, then."

Jane caught the point between her fingers with ninja speed, wrenching Sabrina's weapon out of her hand and onto the floor.

_Strong girl._ She scrambled for another gold pick, resenting her pregnancy now more than ever, but Jane darted in her way and wrestled her to the ground. A right hand with a small central hole hovered over her. _That's not the EM –_

A liquid splattered.

CHAPTER 20

Sabrina huffed and puffed as each step toward Aberdeen Park increased her labor strain. This cinched it – in what sane world would a couple hours result in a month's worth of fetal growth?

"Sorry, Sabrina, but this is the best place for you to stay. Anywhere else could just be another nanobot-infested trap."

That was probably wrong, knowing Jane's track record, but she'd take what she could get. What mattered was the availability of an obstetrician who wasn't prone to wreaking havoc on her and the child. _God, how did I get here?_

Could this really be a simulation? The farther along she went, her knees buckling under the weight of something more stressful on her body than all her past pains combined, the more real it felt, so lifelike as to be impossible for Marshall to have planted into her psyche with a machine.

Yet the opposite was just as preposterous. No one gives birth only a few days after the fact.

Jane caught Sabrina's arms in its own at the last second before she could collapse onto the barren ground. "Come on, just a few hundred more yards."

"And then what?" She let herself lie gently, wishing she could spit acid in that beautiful yet hopeless face of Jane's. "What is this all for, Jane? Even if I knew why you're trying to help me, you're doing a terrible job of it. You don't know how to deliver a baby. No one on this godforsaken planet does anymore because of your bastard of a boyfriend!"

"I'm doing the best I –"

"Well do better!" Sabrina fended off Jane's attempts to stand her up. "You wanna help out? Then here's something you could do. Leave me here, don't let me slow you down, and go find some antiseptic and any written resources on childbirth. You can disable any robots in your way with your hand, right?"

"Zolnerowich disarmed that gun, but in an emergency I can use a backup." She looked away. "I can't read though."

_Of course. Keep down the powerless by keeping them illiterate._ Sabrina moaned in exhaustion.

"I'm not leaving you here."

"You have no choice, Jane! I appreciate the concern, but good intentions aren't gonna get this baby out safely." She felt like a cannon was ready to launch out of her as she hyperventilated. "Look, our only hope is to find Dennis. He at least has some medical knowledge."

"Last I saw him, he was heading back to Livingston's house."

"What? Did he take an overdose of his stupid pills? Marshall will cage him there for sure!"

"He knows that, but he said there was something really important there that might help revive everyone."

"Get him. Now."

Sabrina lay awaiting the explosion, her face contorted and sweat merged with the heat of midday to form an obscuring veneer over her eyesight. "Where _are_ you, Marshall?" she shrieked.

Jane's graceful strides led it out of Sabrina's view. Not once did it turn back.

The contractions peaked in intensity, sending stabbing aches that let her know there was no time for delay. Calling herself an idiot for not having Jane do it sooner, Sabrina plowed through the pain to remove the dirty, tight pants and undergarments.

Please, God...

There was no need to push. In a burst of what might as well have been a million tooth-pullings, a tiny, wet, red head emerged. It was screaming almost as loudly as its mother, a shrill, alien cry that demonized it.

Even as the physical stress faded, how was she supposed to proceed? She had no clue how to sever the cord properly, for starters. With her luck, the poor thing would suffer the same fate as most babies delivered by insufficiently sanitized doctors' hands, back in the Dark Ages.

Sabrina kept the child on her legs as she tore off a part of her shirt. She swaddled the baby in the cloth and pressed it as close to her as possible. They were still tied on an organic level.

The baby calmed as much as Sabrina did, but it seemed to share her silent distress.

Perhaps some of Sabrina's tears were of elation – it was her child, a remarkably healthy one at that – yet she still felt a sense of horrific unnaturalness about both the baby and the way it had entered the world. The infant really was an "it" to her, so much did her curiosity about its sex pale in comparison to the logistics of its development in less than a week. This simply wasn't normal.

Not that it, or she, ever asked for this. What kind of monster was Marshall Patterson?

Welcome to your life, Sabrina, virtual or not.

It wouldn't have been possible for the child to nurse, but it showed no signs of desiring to do so. More muffled wails erupted as it lay on its mother's swollen belly, and she could not help giving it the warmest smile she could manage in her weakness.

The anguish that had melted into fearful joy took a new form as the phantom of the moon peeked into Sabrina's view behind the child. The partial circle reminded her of Marshall, and how this affair had arisen from her choice, if that really was what it had been – no, _his_ choice, she wasn't going to let him make her believe this was her fault – to betray his lover. Disregarding the oxytocin Sabrina knew was creating bias, Jane had become more of a person than her first child.

Her first son.

* * * *

The impossible was happening. Right before her eyes, Sabrina's son was perceptibly growing.

It defied all biology, this exponential enlarging of a newborn whose umbilical connection disappeared by sheer force. But the more Sabrina looked into those blue eyes, those facial foreshadows of Uriah's stoicism, those fluffs of dirty-blond hair, that skin so strikingly intermediate between her pale and Uriah's dark – it was God's cry to her that this was real, that young Michael was her own. The maternal bond was too much like Mom had described it.

At first the changes were as undetectable to a constant observer as the drying of paint, but as the afternoon passed Sabrina had the sense of viewing a fast-forwarded recording. _God only knows what this'll do to screw him up mentally._

The boy nestled in her arms, for she was sitting up now, having endured a sharp afterbirth. Michael studied the arid environment with uncanny placidity. He took particular interest in the derelict machinery, giving the cold shoulder to any passing animals and even to the tempestuous expressions of his mother.

As she shot worried glances into the distance and rubbed her lower belly uneasily, Sabrina realized that Michael might very well become her opposite, only extremely so. At this rate, he would have the mind of a one-year-old upon reaching her physical age. Probably worse.

She'd tried to make him drink, but paradoxically the boy who grew at lightning speed neither wanted nutrition, nor required it. _Lucky kid._

It wasn't luck, of course, but she gave up trying to make sense of things. What scared her was that the surrealism of this real world had begun to kill the faith she tended to fall back on, when sense failed. Not necessarily her newfound religion. This was a despair more powerful than that part of her that had slogged through every adversity in her life, just for life's sake.

What was worth doing, now that she couldn't trust the order of the universe itself?

Michael climbed off Sabrina and took his first steps. He stopped at the front door of a building, which opened automatically to greet him.

Finlon Humane Society.

Sabrina found upon standing that she had recovered quickly. Whatever bizarre trait he had, he must have inherited it from his moon-resident mother. Apparently Marshall was capriciously doling out nuggets of mercy to try to get some Stockholm syndrome out of her, but she wasn't prepared to let this work. She staggered, now decently dressed, toward her wayward son.

By the time she was inside, Michael had his index finger pointed toward a robotic dog. The purest fascination was in his eyes as he turned toward his mother.

Her guts settled about a foot lower than normal. "No, Michael!" She snatched him up into her arms, exited the building, and set her sights west, where Jane had gone.

"Mama."

Sabrina stopped to look him in the eyes. "Yes, Michael," she told him with more seriousness than she remembered ever hearing from Cheryl McAllister as a kid. "I'm your mama. And you're my son." She broke eye contact and marched down the Aberdeen road. "You may be a freak, maybe even a pawn in Marshall's game, but you're my son."

Her belt buzzed.

* * * *

"Governess, how did you –?"

"Please do not say another word until I say so, Miss Lockhart." _Oh hey, join the party of people trying to suppress me._ "Listen carefully. We have reason to believe your child is a danger to you."

"What? Michael? You know about him?" Sabrina glanced down at the boy, who by now could be mistaken for an eighteen-month-old. She'd grossly underestimated his metabolic speed. "That's... ridiculous." She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the drop of the curb.

"Must I repeat myself? Distance yourself from the boy immediately, Sabrina. Now."

"I can't leave a kid alone out here! _My_ kid."

A fuzzy sigh sounded in her earpiece. "I am aware of his unorthodox growth. Indeed, I can scarcely find a pattern to it, which makes me and my colleagues suspect that this anomaly goes beyond an accidental birth defect. Nature works in a mathematical manner. This is the working of a human mind, namely Marshall Patterson's."

This didn't come as too much a surprise to her, but it hardly made it easier to believe what was happening. Could nanobots really do this? "You don't think he would –?"

"Yes, he would. Miss Lockhart, I wouldn't find it any less unthinkable to desert a child, but it has to be done. For now, at least."

Michael was babbling out of interest in the network of traffic control devices. He turned to Sabrina and stared, presumably wondering why his mother was talking to no one in the vicinity.

"I promise you I will not let any harm befall the boy," Zolnerowich continued. "I will explain how later, but suffice it to say Marshall's monopoly on Earth robotics has lost its edge."

"Okay." She knelt to be level with him, astounded that she didn't have to go too low for this purpose. "Michael, mama has to go for a little while. You stay here and keep out of trouble, understand?"

He nodded, but she doubted how reliable his silent word was. She exerted her scarce reserves of energy from yesterday to reach a small grocery market.

Casting her own semi-Amish principles into a vat of acid for survival's sake, Sabrina feasted on the nearest mechanically preserved orange. She took off to the farthest corner of the shop, checked to see if Michael had broken in despite the lock she'd used, and sat. "Talk to me."

"You realize that Michael's father is biologically Mr. Uriah, but that Mr. Patterson was the one who initiated the conception, correct?"

"Sure, but..." Sabrina rubbed her upper arm, looking down. "Governess, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Marshall's a rat, but he didn't force me or anything. I'm as responsible for this as he is." Why was she saying this nonsense?

"Was," said Zolnerowich after a few moments' pause as if she didn't believe her at all.

"No, he's still alive. Sort of."

"Miss Lockhart, the body that housed Mr. Patterson's mind died in the time since you left the village. Mr. Uriah killed him."

Her eyebrows creased as she looked back at the entrance. "Why would he need to? I put Dennis's brain in the Libertas after Michael was conceived. There was no one to kill, unless Marshall can make zombies."

Another pause. "Are you saying Mr. Patterson took possession of Mr. Uriah's body without his own brain?"

"It's certainly possible. You're familiar with avatars, right?"

Zolnerowich gasped. "I had never –"

To the southwest, the whoosh of opening doors prompted Sabrina to hoist herself up. _How in God's name...?_

She flew to the emergency exit. Outside, a wooden crate of heaven-knew-what food caught her eye. This would kill her, but it would kill a kid worse, even one smart enough to beat a modern lock. Of course, it occurred to her while she scooted the box in front of the door, he could have just grown freakish muscles as well.

"Keep running, Miss Lockhart." She exhaled and seemed to be trying to steady her voice. "Now, are you telling me that Mr. Patterson is still at large?"

Sabrina kept silent until she reached Aberdeen Park. She turned around, craned her neck, and, satisfied, cursed Zolnerowich. "Are you expecting what I think you're expecting?"

"Which is?"

"Don't be stupid. It's the only conclusion that makes sense. Marshall hasn't just bugged Michael to supersede his genes. He's in my son's brain, just like he was in Dennis's. Like a parasite who leaves a host when it becomes inconvenient for him."

Zolnerowich made no objection.

"And you're gonna ask me to oust the host along with the parasite, because it's the last thing Marshall would expect me to do to my child. You sick excuse for a leader, after all I went through –!"

"There are other options."

She scanned for a discreet place that could also offer the higher ground. Regardless of how unwilling she was to kill the boy, he was a threat, and there was no sense letting him catch up to overhear their conversation – evidently this was a secret communication line that Marshall had yet to hack.

A cliff. It was low enough for Sabrina to scale, but high enough that by the time Michael reached its top, she could be anywhere, from his view. She respired as she responded, "Like what?"

"It is a high-risk operation, but after consulting with the people of Luna in a democratic manner, we have come to decide the reward is worth it."

"Get to the point!" Sabrina levered her weight onto the ledge, leaving herself totally exhausted.

"Promise you will suspend judgment on my ethics until I have finished my explanation, is that clear?"

"No one can keep from judging. She can only choose whether to voice it. But sure, whatever."

Another pause and a sigh. "Eighteen hundred kilometers above sea level is a satellite whose name, in Russian, means 'spirit.' The Lunar branch of RFSA put it in orbit just two days ago, meaning even if Mr. Patterson has a grasp on Earth's other man-made satellites, he could not touch this one."

Sabrina put a hand to her chin as her lips slid to the right.

"This is not an ordinary satellite, Miss Lockhart. Its engineers have armed it with a cannon capable of firing an electromagnetic pulse at a distant target, with astounding range as well as power."

"That couldn't possibly be in accordance with international law. It's a military satellite, isn't it?"

"You must be understanding. We never wanted another arms race, which is why we started off the so-called Cold War Two by investing more money and resources in Project Luna instead. The U.S. was the one slowing itself down in the Space Race with its heavy military budget, as we soon discovered."

She wouldn't dispute that, much as she considered herself equally an American and a Russian. But this was an outrage. "You've been using our taxes to make a martial base out of what was supposed to be a hub of pure scientific research and human progression? And in secret, at that!"

"Miss Lockhart, surely you are aware that America has secured its weapons of mass destruction by electronic means? The locks are designed so that only the people collectively can authorize the bombs' use, in theory. But the WMD are also proofed against unlocking by electromagnetism. Even the most precise of pulses would render the weapon extremely difficult to set off."

"So our military planned to fire this thing in hopes that at least a sliver of it would turn each of America's nukes into a dud." To do so manually, as antiwar activists had doubtless tried, would simply take too long with that many weapons in store.

"That is correct."

Sabrina was seething. "Governess, you are one lucky woman." _Because I can't give you an earful right now._

A boy who looked about six years old gripped a stone on the wall below her.

* * * *

Sabrina tripped over a rock, faceplanting in the dust. Her belly ached as much as her head.

"Mama, stop running from me."

Youthful, gangling arms wrapped around her waist and raised her to her feet. She flung him away and staggered forward. "Governess, fire it!"

"It's not that simple." Michael pulled her by the hand, beginning to sob. "Think of the political ramifications, and we can't be sure the loss of Michael's nanotechnological control won't also kill him."

Sabrina groaned, let go of his hand, and turned to face him. His misty eyes implored her protection, but she knew it was a scheme at heart. She pushed him away as gently as possible and took off in a U-turn, fighting back her own tears. "Governess, what's the fastest way to Livingston's house?"

"If you're searching for Mr. Uriah, you're wasting your time."

"What, what's happened to Dennis now?" Sabrina jumped off the low cliff, checking for an old-fashioned automobile against which robotic control would be useless. There was none. "He isn't dead, is he?"

"Worse."

Michael was at the foot of the cliff when she turned around. He held an EM gun pointed at her ear.

She instinctively held her hands up, creeping forward. "Governess, this'll have to wait." _What's your gambit now, Marshall?_ Not as if he'd heard enough to go on.

"Give me that talkie, Mama."

Sabrina stayed statue-still, except for her eyes, which searched for something, anything that could absorb or deflect a pulse. All the while, Zolnerowich was rattling off all the information she deemed essential. "Marshall, I know you're in there. Let's be reasonable. You can trust me by now, can't you?"

"My name's Michael, Mama. Gimme the talkie!"

She said and did nothing for ten seconds, choosing her words carefully. "This is silly. The person I'm talking to won't tell you anything, and keeping me from talking to her won't help you. She's the one with the important info, not me."

Michael stepped closer. "Gimme!"

Sabrina sidestepped just as he tackled her. The puerile hands pulled her hair, bringing her left ear nearer. She grabbed his wrists with one hand and swiped off the communicator with another. In a flash, her heel crushed the machine.

"All right, you've had your fun, Marshall. Now what d'you wa–"

Marshall's facial features were twisted in the onset of weeping. The shaggy-haired child dropped the EM gun and wrapped his arms around her legs, burying his face in the denim.

Sabrina cast her gaze down at the little wretch, biting her lip. She closed her eyes and looked away, trying to fight back the emotions, but then she saw the bits of the earpiece. Her vision didn't stray from that sight for a long moment, as Michael's sobs carried through the air.

Zolnerowich's words echoed in her head. "Mr. Patterson could have copied his avatar to millions of androids. Unless we were to annihilate the infrastructure of modern society, the satellite would be useless."

And so would the gun inches from her feet. Her stare returned to the boy.

What else can I do?

She reciprocated the embrace, persistent though that doubt was that told her she was hugging two people.

When Sabrina saw Michael's face again, he hadn't grown at all.

CHAPTER 21

Sabrina's and Marshall's silent battle of wits came to a halt at the front door of 542 Stanley Way. She gulped, holding Michael's hand that felt warm in the evening chill. Zolnerowich hadn't had the time to specify what Uriah's "worse" was, much less how she knew that, but she had an idea, if Livingston had a Mindscape in his basement.

She stopped herself once the door was open, holding Michael back and looking him in the eyes. She'd asked Marshall if he trusted her, but perhaps the answer depended on how much she trusted him. Enough to enter the second cage?

Fists clenched, she crossed the threshold as another of the governess's statements occupied her mind: "If you choose not to kill your son, you'll have to kill Mr. Uriah, unless there's a better way." _I put him in there, now I have to let him out._

The door shut. She didn't have to turn back to know it was sealed, maybe forever.

The lights were on downstairs, shadows of two people visible from the top step. The voice of Marshall's Libertas uttered, "Can you do us all a favor and just stay dead?"

"Dennis?"

When she reached the floor, there were indeed Uriah and a Mindscape. Jane lay on the floor, naked and unconscious. But another man sat between the Mindscape and the hemispherical machine she'd seen in the leaked video, back in the Amish village. It was the body that had fathered the boy next to her.

"Dennis, what's going on here? What happened to Jane? Zolnerowich told me you killed Marshall."

Uriah said nothing, his jaw dropped at the sight of Michael. Marshall appeared quite entertained at the situation. "Sabrina! Michael! Welcome to the family reunion." He traipsed across the room to hug her.

"Get off of me at the very least until I know how the hell you're still alive, and in two bodies at once for that matter." She held Michael closer as his father stepped back.

"Forget that question," said Uriah, still staring at her son. "I'd like to know who that is and why you look like you recently gave birth."

"Let me see if I can explain," said Marshall. "We can start by dropping the weapon, Dennis."

Sabrina only now noticed the small EM gun in his hand. He put it to Marshall's head. "Like hell I will! You have the nanos I need, and you're leaving this house either dead or under arrest."

"I could say the same about you, but let's be honest. Who's more likely to kill the other, all things considered?"

Sabrina almost slapped him. "Where'd your ideals go, Marshall? Did you never have them – did you never plan to reverse the vitrification?"

"I wasn't talking about myself. But don't you start playing the good guy." Marshall pushed the EM gun away from his head, snatched it out of Uriah's hand, and directed it toward him, making him breathe deeper and break into a sweat. "I'm disappointed at what you chose to do with the chance I gave you, Sabrina."

"What chance? You made me give birth at this age and put yourself inside my son just to make it harder to see you die!"

"Sound familiar, God girl? Have a seat and we can talk about this like adults."

They sat at a stained old poker table off to the side. "Don't worry about Jane. You can't tell because her hair is covering the nodes, but she's in the Mindscape right now, enjoying my company."

"So it's true, then," said Sabrina. "You've copied your avatar everywhere."

"An avatar? Jesus, of course!" Uriah tried to glare at the man at his side putting a gun to his ear. "You mean to tell me that you not only screwed Sabrina and put yourself in the kid's brain, but you're also in almost everyone else's mind?"

_I hadn't thought of that._ Marshall lowered the gun, smiling at Uriah with his own face. "You're smarter than I suspected. Although I wish I didn't have to tell you how I keep from dying, since it should be obvious given your goal. I 'have the nanos,' as you put it."

"Dennis, how exactly did you kill him?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I punched him, but it wasn't strong enough to cause death."

"Also obvious if you think about it, but I'll let you figure that one out for yourselves." Marshall folded his hands and took a deep breath. "Let me make one thing, if nothing else, exceptionally clear. This isn't how I intended things to occur, in part because of the deviations of the both of your choices, but mostly because I'm a man who knows when to change his mind. When he's wrong."

"What was the first thing you realized was wrong?" Sabrina spat. "Your choice to virtually kill the majority of humans? Or how about torturing me in the Mindscape?"

"Deserting the woman who loves you to death is pretty low, too," said Uriah.

"None of the above. My mistake was putting too much trust in humanity."

"Did you trust me enough not to put a breathing spy camera in my uterus?" She looked down at Michael as if to say, _No offense._

"Exactly." Marshall observed the flickering light above him for a moment. "Let me put it this way: I made the Dethroning reversible because I had hope for humans. Not enough hope to let them try in vain to get out of the hole they'd dug for themselves, but enough to let them see what's outside the hole once the anesthesia wears off."

"But you're a human as much as 'they' are. What makes you so special?"

"That's my point. I still maintain that my beliefs are sound, but now it's clear to me that I was a fool to think I could convey the beauty of my vision to distrustful people, if I wouldn't trust another human attempting the same on me. I know I have as much to learn about the art of perfect trust – perfect fear – as others."

"So why not give up now and tell us how to reverse the Dethroning?" said Uriah.

Marshall faced Sabrina. "Because this little lady hasn't earned my confidence, and given the chance I suspect none of you would do better. You've already done worse so far, Dennis."

"What do you mean?" Sabrina slammed a fist on the table.

"I had learned the way from someone significantly more powerful than I. I'd supposed that it would be just as fruitful to pass on that wisdom to people with less power than I have, but my attempts to do this with you two have failed. It's not as easy for others, it seems, to learn trust by trust's simplest, ugliest form.

"So I decided that nothing is sacred. What the teacher does with knowledge shouldn't always be what the pupil does with it. If you'll react not to pure fear, but to trust that knows no authority, I can work with that." He reclined with interlocked hands. "I did just that. I leveled the playing field for the benefit of us all. Yes, I've made it impossible for you to kill me, but" – Marshall handed Uriah back the weapon – "I can't kill you. At least, I wouldn't."

"Marshall, we're not idiots!" she said. "You could easily kill us." Not that she knew why she was so adamant about that fact.

Marshall shook his head. "This is what I was talking about. You just didn't get it, did you? Ever notice how I haven't modified your mind since you left the Mindscape? Or the lack of robots accosting you on your way here? I haven't killed you yet. Sabrina, in the Mindscape I gave you complete power over me, and what did you do with it? You refused to show mercy."

"Because you did the same!"

"That's not what compassion is about." By now his voice had taken on a thoroughly pleading, genuine tone. He wasn't angry, just frustrated like an innocent person accused of something incredibly heinous. He stood, walking toward the Mindscape. "It would've been easy for you to reject your primal rage if I hadn't harmed you. Had you overcome the challenge I set before you, I would've begun to trust you. I've been practically crying my intentions out to you by taking the form of human most vulnerable to you." Marshall smiled at his son.

"So what'll you do about it now?" said Uriah. "Are you prepared to give up more of your power? Getting rid of your copies would be a good start."

"Afraid not, Dennis. You, as someone infatuated with immortality, should understand that. But there is something you two can do to earn my trust. It's simple – something you would've done without my asking, actually." Lights came on from the center of the room along with the hum of active machinery. When he returned to the table, Marshall held a Mindscape node in each hand.

"No. I'm _not_ going back in that asylum again." Uriah got up and thrust the gun out. There was a deranged terror in his eyes.

"Dennis, stop!" Sabrina grabbed his arm. "Listen, our choices have run out. You can't keep shooting him for years until he runs out of copies. Let's give Marshall a chance."

He looked at Sabrina as if she'd just asked him to let Kim Jong-il babysit Michael.

She gave him a look, with a subtle glimpse at Marshall and a shake of the head. He shut up and lowered the gun, and they turned to face Marshall. "Okay, we'll bite. But only if you disconnect Jane from there and either give her the EM gun or destroy it."

"Excellent!" He took Jane's electrodes along with an extra pair and attached them to their heads, wearing Uriah's smile of victory.

"What are we supposed to do when we get in?" Sabrina said, throwing an anxious sidelong glance at Michael.

"Just decide who lives. Feel free to tell him what Zolnerowich talked to you about, Sabrina. And you can be as honest as you want, Dennis."

* * * *

"This is from my dreams," said Sabrina.

They sat on a branch of a green-tinged, massive tree. Everything had a tint of some emerald shade: the clouds that crawled across the sky dome as if time were dozens of orders faster, the mountainous expanse in the distance, the aurora hovering over their heads, the other trees that formed a perimeter around a chasm with no bottom in sight. Their branch extended almost to the hole's center, impossibly supporting their weight.

"It's beautiful," Uriah admitted. "But it's a distraction. What do you think Marshall meant by 'decide who lives'?"

"Somehow I doubt that means we're supposed to kill each other. It wouldn't fit with how he's gone about things so far." She didn't look at him directly as they conversed, rather at the pit. "You know, in real life I'd be terrified of falling in there. I'm not afraid in here, even though for all I know there could be anything in that. Probably hell."

"Ya think he would do that? Marshall's a scumbag, but could anyone be willing to subject another human to that kind of torture?"

Sabrina snapped a twig off the branch, stretched out her hand, and dropped the twig. She cupped a hand around her ear and leaned toward the pit. "It could just be bottomless. Falling forever – maybe that's hell."

Uriah said nothing in the time he was mesmerized by the disappearance of the twig. Then Sabrina jumped at the snap of his fingers near her ear.

"Forget it," said Uriah. "This is what he wants. He tried putting us in confinement to make us crazy, and that didn't work, so now this is the ploy to make us put our guards down. This is probably just the start of what he could give us. Dig deep enough in someone's memories and you could find something so... euphoric that they couldn't say no to whatever twisted demands are made of them."

He stopped, his mouth open. He seemed to be seized up in an ecstatic moment, unaware that he was falling backward.

"Dennis!" Sabrina took his hands and looked into his eyes, which were focused somewhere between the aurora and the trees. They were really his eyes, not those of the Libertas, perhaps because she still remembered him as he'd been before the transplant. Uriah didn't respond, but he was breathing heavily. She analyzed the rest of the tree. It was a complicated mess of wood and leaves, but in this world she felt no apprehension about navigating it. Marshall truly had given up on terror.

Uriah sobered up by the time they landed on the forest floor. "This isn't good, Sabrina," he gasped. "I mean, it was incredible, what I just went through, but it's gonna end up killing me."

His voice as he said "incredible" said enough about the experience, but she could only barely suppress a hint of curiosity. Envy, even. "Or worse," she said, standing and trying in vain to discern what lay beyond the woods.

There was still the ghost of a wide smile on his face. "What could be worse than death? That could result from this kind of pleasure, I mean."

"Betraying your identity. You don't exactly give into bribery, after all." Sabrina led the way into the crowd of trees. Something in the gentle sway of these plants, which soon gave way to the travelers and left open a path easy to the feet, softened her to the core, reluctant as she was to believe it. "We just might get out of this nightmare alive, but we sure won't be ourselves anymore."

"Maybe it's just the dopamine talking, but I could live with this. If I weren't at the mercy of a man who'd sell me down the river easily for his 'vision,' that is."

She stopped and faced him. "Are you serious?"

"Look, Sabrina, I may be the only man whose first thought after almost every human dies is, 'Dandylicious, this is the perfect chance for me to extend my lifespan!' But it was, until Marshall decided to become too powerful for his or anyone else's good. A happy life is all I ever wanted, identity be damned."

"I can't believe you! Hasn't anyone told you, 'Those willing to give up liberty for security deserve neither'?"

Uriah scoffed. "Benjamin Franklin was a hack. The problem here isn't Marshall taking our freedom. It's that this isn't real security, which _needs_ the freedom to defend yourself. That's the one thing we can't do until we stop wasting time and just decide who lives."

She stayed in place, hands on hips, even as he gestured for her to keep going. "So that's it, then. After all this, you'd stay here if Marshall somehow convinced you that he wouldn't screw you over. Maybe he won't. He gave you that gun, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but you know as well as I do that the more powerful someone is, the more you should stay wary of them." He turned his head to the side, but his body still faced forward. "Or do you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sabrina took great strides to keep up, losing the peace the trees had once given her.

He crossed his arms when she met him. "Marshall called you 'God girl.'"

"So?"

"All I'm saying is I'm surprised you aren't the one acquiescing to a godlike power who could damn you as easily as save you."

"That's different. I don't know much about God, but he's _God_. He knows how everything will end up, and I have reasons to think it'll all be for the greater good."

He gave her a look that conveyed as much skepticism of what she believed as of whether she actually believed it. "Why'd you hide it from me, Sabrina?"

She supposed he'd earned some honesty. "I thought you'd lose your respect for me."

"I never said I respected you. The better question is, why were you afraid of that?"

She tried to be nonchalant. "We were in a life-or-death situation. You could've decided your life was more important than mine."

"What do you take me for? Come on. You don't have to be ashamed for wanting summa this."

She laughed nervously. "Don't flatter yourself. Just another trick of Marshall's on my mind, nothing more."

He scrutinized her as they continued walking. "Maybe you're telling the truth. That would make sense, and good for you if you value respect more than looks."

"'That would make sense'?" She smiled and looked down. It wasn't as if she wore her lesbianism on her sleeve. "Well, you just see through everything, don'tcha?"

"And you sure don't. Look up and ahead."

What she saw repulsed her. It was now dark and red rather than a soothing verdant hue. Vines dominated the site beyond the forest they had exited, and the aurora and swirling clouds were gone.

"How did you –?"

"As we were walking, I just focused on the memory. That's how I got out of here before you got to Livingston's, but this is the best I could do to fight Marshall's influence. It's from my own dreams, which I guess says something Freudian about what my subconscious thinks of the world."

For that moment more than any other before, Sabrina felt shame – like a traitor to the Organics, to America. _This wasn't just a sacrifice of the comfort of a Libertas for him. He was a victim, and he hated himself for not being able to change that._

"So now we have no excuse to sit on our asses. Tell me, what did Zolnerowich talk with you about?"

* * * *

Uriah buried his face in his hand. Sabrina couldn't have looked him in the eyes anyway.

"He's my son, too, in a sense," he said. "I couldn't kill him. But..."

Out of some strange inquisitiveness, he pricked a finger on one of the thorny vines. "There's no way out of doing that, y'know. I bet my life that Michael couldn't survive with that whacked-out metabolism of his, without Marshall's nanos."

_I'll hold you to that._ "There has to be a better way."

"Well, I'm sorry, but there just isn't. And even if there is, Zolnerowich will never find it out. She's a politician."

"A smart politician. Maybe she knows what she's doing. She seems like the kind of person who can make difficult decisions with ethical responsibility."

He kept giving himself pain, to which she didn't object, but she refused to imitate him. "Right. I'm sure that's why she tried to get us together so we could raise a child in some sham relationship."

Sabrina looked at him. _He probably doesn't want to let go of Pat._ "You've got the sham part right, but can you really blame her? Like it or not, she's an authority figure, and if humanity loses its chance to keep going after all these years, guess who gets the 'off with her head'? Especially when the people trust their government to prevent these kinds of abuses of technology."

Uriah only shook his head and shrugged in incredulity. She added in a smaller voice, "Dennis, I have something else to tell you that you might not like, but I have to get it out."

"Yeah?"

"Suppose you find a way to become an Organic again. If the choice has to come down to one of the options we already have, I'd go with the governess's plan."

"Doesn't surprise me. It's not like there's any other way to get rid of Marshall's copies, right?" _That's not what I was getting at._ "Jesus!" He'd stabbed himself particularly hard. The growing splotch of blood on his arm would have been, outside the Mindscape, the same color as this monochromatic world.

"Is that necessary?"

"It's more necessary than anything I do here. Marshall's watching our every move, and I want him to know I won't follow the pied piper. He's trying to drug me up right now, I can feel it, but I can fight it with pain." Another loud curse accompanied his self-mutilation. "Why aren't you high as a kite right now, anyway?"

"I was for a while, actually. Trying to hide it from Marshall, just to not give him the satisfaction. But I'm used to it by now. It's kinda disappointing once it loses its novelty, just like real world pl–"

She found herself mute as she lay on the grass face-up. First was a sensation of her body becoming, in a way, immaterial – not far from Uriah's description of a Libertas's elimination of numerous small discomforts one hadn't even been aware of. Then every sense entered nirvana.

Light danced in aesthetic perfection. The perfume of deities permeated virtual air. A song of every cherished melody from her past played in the best possible order. Each substance pleasing to the skin embraced her. And she could taste ambrosia.

"I – I love Marshall," she whispered.

Slivers of the matrix outside her current one surfaced. Uriah's panicked face was superimposed on the panorama. A sanguine odor and a slapping sensation came with the muffled sound of his voice. It was all tantamount to the buzz of a fly at a rock concert.

She longed for Marshall's presence, and he brought it to her. Slowly, peacefully came the illusion.

Then the fly alighted on the microphone.

* * * *

"Well, that's not exactly what I had in mind."

Marshall leaned against the Mindscape capsule, extending an arm laterally to block Michael from coming to his mother. "Oh, now that's gotta warm your heart."

Sabrina looked to the side. Uriah was regaining consciousness even though the nodes on his temples were active. Jane, back in her clothes at Marshall's side, seemed a husk, the closest to a "normal" robot she'd ever been.

"Dennis, what –?"

"I decided who lived: neither of us."

She should've suspected this, if her previous experience with exiting a Mindscape was any indication. Uriah had killed them both.

"Clever," said Marshall, "but insane. You'd sooner annihilate yourselves than accept the closest thing to heaven the natural world has to offer."

"It's not the craziest thing any one of us could do," said Uriah. "Look at Jane. It's kind of sad. You've done all this out of hope that everyone could have their personal Jane, a non-judgmental, unconditional lover." Sabrina's eyes flickered back to her son, struggling against the resistance of Uriah's original body. _Why is he keeping Michael from me?_ "But you can't even get the prototype right!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Does she look like she loves you? Be honest with yourself."

His eyes flared. "Just because she has a minor error that makes her benevolent to you, it doesn't mean she doesn't love me."

" _Minor_ error?" Uriah stood and approached Marshall. "If this weren't a big deal, you wouldn't be singling Sabrina and me out. Cut the 'perfect trust' bull. This isn't about trust, it's about jealousy. You can't stand to see Jane showing even the slightest signs of empathy for anyone but yourself – when it doesn't suit your wishes, anyway."

So this was all some human analysis, some... experiment. "Oh my God," she said, still observing Michael, who had now given up and was toying with the Dethroning machine. "You're not going to –?" _Why didn't I see this sooner?_

"Keeping you from killing me was a happy side-effect, but yes, this is why Michael is here with us today." He nodded to the hemisphere and drew what should have been Jane's EM gun.

"What is this?" said Uriah, who glanced down at the weapon a few times but kept his chin up. "What are you doing to my son?"

"Seeing if your resistance to vitrification is hereditary. I'd already tried to Dethrone you when you were farther from this device, but it seems proximity isn't the variable we're looking for."

"And if he ends up 'dying'? That doesn't prove anything."

"You're right, it doesn't." As he spoke, he slowly lifted the gun from Uriah's chest to his head. "That's why I'm testing Sabrina, too."

"Oh, no you aren't," she said. "If I haven't earned your confidence, then, well, you're a long way from deserving mine." She stepped toward Michael.

"Any more movement in that direction and he goes." Marshall gave the gun a little tap on Uriah's forehead. "He's right about another thing – this isn't a game of trust. It used to be, but you've both proven what I knew before any of this. Perfect trust is wasted on humans, and so is every other fear. That's why I've freed the androids and prepared the humans for enslavement." He kept his and Uriah's eyes locked together. "Jane, be a doll and hand me the ring."

Ring?

Jane stood still, not letting her eyes stray from the floor.

"The ring, Janie."

Her hand crept to the outside of her right pocket, then clenched around air. "I don't want to."

"Now's not the time for this _bullshit_ , Jane." He sidestepped over to her without changing his gun's target.

She put up her left palm, looking up for the first time since Sabrina had seen her in this house. "You can't control me. You're not Marshall."

He laughed nervously as his pupils followed Michael for a second. The boy hopped and grabbed onto Jane's arm like a chin-up bar just as Uriah fell back in a kick to Marshall's ankle.

Sabrina lunged at the man in Uriah's body – whoever he was – and yelled, "Jane, _now_!"

It was too late. Michael, though still as short as a child, grew the muscles of a bodybuilder, overpowering the robot's scrawny arm. Uriah got his bearings and tried to keep the Organic man down, but the latter rolled so that he could aim his EM gun at the Dethroning machine. "This is for you, Jane."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sabrina saw horror in his face as she dashed to Jane's side. Michael reached for the ring that was now on her hand. In his struggle against his mother, who was forcing him into the line of fire, he neglected to keep the robot's palm directed away from his father.

"Dammit!"

He was dead, but this was scant consolation as a heart-sinking thud brought the room into silence.

I did it. My own son...

CHAPTER 22

Uriah was looking around the basement. There were red marks on the neck of his previous body.

She could barely enunciate her words, and when they did come out, they were hoarse. "Why isn't he –?"

"That's why I'm searching. I strangled him so he would have to wait a while to revive the body, but there's no stopping him from screwing things up more while the body's still usable."

She offered Jane a hug – as much for herself, she supposed – which the robot accepted. "You sure about this, Dennis? When that body's beyond repair, you won't have anywhere to hide from the satellite."

"I know that. It wouldn't be the first time one of us did something absolutely mental today." His eyes rested on the boy before he resumed the scour.

_No..._ The implications of the predicament dawned on her just as the noise of shattering glass rang out.

Uriah emerged from the darkness holding a long shard. "This'll do."

"Dennis, we can't –"

"You mean _you_ can't. That's my body he's manipulating, and I'm prepared to sacrifice it. If you could cut Michael off from the machines that were probably keeping him alive, butchering the body shouldn't be too hard."

"It's not that it's immoral, I just... can't do it. What if he could still live?"

He knelt by the unconscious man. "Then Marshall, or whoever Jane thinks he is, is gonna make a puppet of him. I don't like this any more than you do, Sabrina, but it's too risky to leave the bodies vulnerable to control until we find some way to contact Zolnerowich."

"I –"

"What are you doing, Dennis?" said Jane.

_Jane._ Uriah wasn't the only one whose life they couldn't spare.

"You said it yourself. This isn't Marshall."

She shoved Sabrina aside and reached for the shard, but he held his hand out of her reach. "No, the person controlling the body wasn't Marshall," she said. "But his brain is still in there."

"It's vitrified, Jane. There's nothing we can do."

She thrust her hand in front of his face. "You might think it's okay to give up at this point, but I don't. Now, I want some answers!"

"You think you can intimidate me? Whatever happened to helping Sabrina and me, even when it didn't bring you any closer to Marshall?"

Sabrina approached Jane, resting a hand on her upper arm, but the android did not soften in the slightest. "It was bringing me closer to him. I had to get rid of this impostor, but now I just need to get the antidote out of his copies. And I can't do that without you two."

Uriah scowled. "You bitch. Is that what we've been to you all this time? Tools to get to Marshall?"

"Dennis, go easy on her," Sabrina said. "She can't help it, this is just what she was made for. We were idiots to think otherwise."

"Yeah, well, psychopaths were made to be callous pricks. Does that mean we should tolerate what they do, even if they can't help it?" He focused on Jane's eyes, apparently making an effort not to appear threatened.

"Here's how it's gonna work, 'droid. You are _not_ in the position of power here. Up in the atmosphere right now is a satellite that's ready to nuke every machine on Earth with an EM pulse. Guess who's deciding whether to use it? Humans on Luna. Humans who wouldn't think twice about deactivating you or that 'impostor' who dies right along with the antidote."

Sabrina squirmed. "Um, maybe we should rethink this."

"We aren't the ones who _can_ rethink this, don't you get it?" Uriah took the opportunity of Jane's surprise at his yell to whack her arm away from him. He seized it and threw her to the floor, stabbing the center of the hand with his shard. Jane shrieked.

"Dennis, stop it!" She threw herself in between the two before they could do more damage to each other, snatching the glass knife when she caught him off guard. She picked up the EM gun by the body and threw it out the broken window. "All right, now you're both harmless to each other, and we can be sane about this."

"Sane?" said Uriah. "Sabrina, I don't think you understand the situation. You can't reason with a robot like Jane. All that can pacify her is her maker, and the only way we can revive him is by trying to negotiate with a man who says he's 'prepared the humans for enslavement.'"

"It's not necessarily a man we're dealing with."

"Yes, it is," said Jane.

They stared at her. "What?"

"Dennis, didn't you notice anything about the way he spoke? It reminded me of someone we both thought was the bad guy all along."

Sabrina could not breathe for a second.

"Livingston?" whispered Uriah. He punched the wall. "To think I felt sorry for him!" She raised an eyebrow at this, to which he added, "That's right, you never knew. Sabrina, I made a terrible mistake. I – I looked through the records at EMFI, and... there's no way he could have – God, do I have to spell it out for you?"

She folded her arms, grimacing at a loss as to how to deal with this information. Jane narrowed her eyes. "This has been your fault all this time."

"So? This isn't about blame. It's about dealing with the threat at hand, which is the scum-shitter who enslaved me and brainwashed you, rape or no rape." He held his hand out to Sabrina. "Give me the glass. We're running out of time. Nanobots take a while to travel, but not so long that we can afford to point fingers."

"I'm not giving anyone any weapons until we think this through, especially now that I know what happened the last time you decided to gamble someone's life on false pretenses. You're hurting yourself as much as Jane if you do this."

He looked frustrated beyond belief, but soon he let go and sighed. "Okay, tell you what. Sabrina, you keep that ring directed at my body" – he nodded at the Organic – "and Michael at all times, and I'll go looking through Livingston's stuff. There's probably something here that can help us find the reversal for vitrification. If we can get the cure without letting Livingston screw us over, we all win."

"And now that Livingston's not controlling the bots around here, I'm gonna have a word with the governess," said Jane.

"Right, lemme just go release a bear into a nursery." Uriah grabbed the banister with one hand and pointed at her with the other. "I don't want you out of Sabrina's sight."

"Since when do I have to listen to you?" Jane raised her right hand. "I have more than an EM gun, you know. Get outta my way." She charged toward the stairway, briefly meeting the resistance of his Transhuman strength, then loosed a beam of concentrated hot energy from her palm.

" _Holy –_ " He lay slumped over the wooden steps, which Jane traversed before Sabrina could think of what to do. She knew she could have stopped her with the ring, but it was beyond her capacity.

"Dennis, are you okay?" She rushed to be by his side, but he gave her only a cold glare.

"It didn't exactly hurt, but I think we should be asking why the hell you didn't terminate her."

"I thought you liked her!"

"That was before I knew she was as manipulative as Livingston. Turn around, by the way, I still want you to keep watch," he added with more irritation than he likely intended. "I don't get you, Sabrina. You'll pretty much kill your own son, but not a fanatical robot."

She was glad for the excuse not to lock pupils. "Did I say I was proud of what I did back there? It was in the heat of the moment. But Jane's... a person. I can't, not even when I hate this technological madness so much I'm almost glad for that satellite."

Uriah said nothing.

"It's horrible, I know. I think of my son as a monster! But isn't Jane doing just what any of us is? She does what makes sense to her given what she finds worth fighting for, no matter who wants to stop her."

"I get the point," he grunted. "Give me the ring, and don't turn around. I can't feel the pain, but she messed up my fake muscles somethin' horrible. You do the search, it's less risky to have me here anyway when I'm gonna die."

She backed up beside him and slid the ring into his hand. "You're letting Jane go?"

"Eh, what's the worst she can do? The 'Wich won't listen to her."

Sabrina hesitated. "If this is it for you –"

"Don't say it. If you haven't said it to me already, it would be fake if ya told me now. Just go."

* * * *

The moonlight allowed Sabrina to see the electromagnetic gun on Livingston's lawn. That she'd escaped the house at all might have been a sign that the weapon would be unnecessary, but she had to admit Uriah was right to think of Jane as at least a partial threat.

She stopped at the steps up to the patio, turning around and craning her neck. Regardless of whether what Livingston had said about freeing the androids was true, a police bot could be back on patrol. It would lack apprehension about stunning a woman bringing a gun into someone else's house, and if Jane, wherever she was, ran into her...

_Get a grip._ She opened the door. _If you could survive that omnipotent King of the Androids, this should be easy._ But she was ignorant of _why_ she'd survived him, and ignorance was her worst fear.

To the left of the foyer was a den with a computer resting on a home office desk. Such an obvious goldmine of information, yet if Livingston was a halfway-decent technological virtuoso, it was silently mocking her with its impenetrable security. After she started it up, this prediction proved accurate. She moved on to the bedroom across the hall.

If a messy desk was a sign of a disorganized mind, this room could only lead one to the conclusion that Isaac Livingston was the mortal enemy of the obsessive compulsive mind. Annotated Softsheets flooded the floor. Another, smaller work desk held myriad microcomputers with phenomenal data capacity, even by modern standards. There were even paintings and sketches lining the walls, betraying the man's retro view of the artistic process.

Not that any of this was inherently suspicious. In fact, whatever writing or records Sabrina found were innocuous, and she'd seen far more disturbing artwork in her lifetime than his. If anything, the relatively minimalistic nature of this home reflected well on its owner's priorities. Maybe he really did just want a world where everyone could trust each other.

Still, her nose wrinkled at the chaotic atmosphere. The key could be anywhere!

She pulled open each drawer, performed a search on every digital document that wasn't password-protected, and made feeble hacking attempts on those that were. Next came the "thinking outside the box" stage, but she soon found that perhaps that philosophy was just a new box. All that came to mind was that nagging curiosity about how Uriah had withstood vitrification.

The only consolation was that at least the machines she was snooping through were still active – Uriah wasn't dead, nor was the secret. _Snatch the gold from the beast, then put it to sleep._

Sabrina collapsed onto the dark green sheets of the single bed, covering her face with her hands. She should've just stayed in the Mindscape, living in perpetual happiness. No more conscience, no more of those flashing images in her mind's eye of a person she'd killed coming out of her body. Could her identity really be worth that much, after all?

She lay still, looking at the slits of light passing between her fingers, as if trying to capture an elusive fragment of a dream after waking. A dream about the Mindscape. It frustrated her for minutes. Then –

Marshall.

The doors in her way flew aside while all that ran through her brain was, _Don't be dead. Don't be dead. Give me a miracle, don't be dead!_

Uriah turned around as she descended, muttering something in surprise before cursing himself. She ignored him and snatched up the Mindscape nodes. How did he work these things, again?

"What in Christ's name –"

"Dennis, do you know how to connect someone's brain to the Mindscape?" She affixed the devices to the Organic's temples.

He lowered the ring hand slightly and said, eyebrows creased, "I remember he pressed the thin green button on that capsule, but what's the point of this?"

"You'll see."

Now, how to determine if the blasted thing was even inducing any memory recall? Her heart beat with the apparent goal of compensating for what years of her life she might lose if this went wrong. Not far from the telltale button was the door handle. She grasped it with a sweaty hand and crossed the fingers on her other one.

_Yes!_ Rectangles curved along the inner wall, covering the cylindrical space almost entirely. Straight across from her was a minuscule control panel connected to an upside-down bowl-shaped object overhead. Without hesitation, Sabrina stepped inside, coming to a stop at the matrix of switches.

The "on" button caused only a blink of cerulean light behind her. A voice surrounded her: "Please close the door before operating this device."

Her history with horror movies and mild claustrophobia told her this was a bad idea, but there was no time for risk management here. This was her leap of faith.

"Sabrina, don't –!"

_Clang._ The outlines of each screen imitated the door's blue glow as the pixels of video feed sprang into animation. She exhaled in relief and awe.

No view of the scene was satisfactorily easy to observe, however. It was like trying to watch what someone else was dreaming through their eyes, which made her wonder what the point of multiple screens was. Each showed the same fuzzy image of what seemed to be a beach.

She perused the controls, small yet daunting in complexity. Perhaps these could make the extra screens more useful, but they were clearly not designed so that just anyone could walk in and operate them. One button depicted a human in profile with the bowl-like machine connected to her head. She looked up.

So that was it. The only way into Marshall's virtual skin was through a temporary mind mod. There was probably some mechanism by which she could leave at will, yet the majority of the Mindscape's controls might as well have been crafted by aliens.

"Dennis?" she said, poking her head out.

"I get it. You think Marshall might know, assuming that really is his brain in my body."

"Yeah, but to figure this out, I need to connect my mind to the Mindscape, though not in the same way. So please, if I don't get out of here in half an hour –"

"Fry it."

Sabrina nodded. "I know you're injured, but if push comes to shove, can you make it from there to this door?"

Uriah lifted himself from the steps to within a yard of the Mindscape, using his Transhuman arms. "You're in good hands."

She flashed a smile of as much comfort in him as wan desperation. Shutting herself inside, she pressed the circle.

* * * *

The body she now inhabited, yet could neither recognize nor "control," stepped slowly across the sandy landscape, parallel to the shoreline. His head turned first to his right at the civilization inland, then left at an ocean reflecting the darkness of cumulonimbi overhead. _It's kind of beautiful, but how many fragile bodies will it wreck today? How many of those lives are we accountable for?_

This was a more intimate connection than if she'd merely looked through cameras in his eyes. She had tapped into the senses and thoughts of this Marshall memory, and though in retrospect she wouldn't have done what she did now, were she still "Sabrina," there was no sense of restricted will.

Marshall gazed into the sloshing waters. The reflection of his face was rather rounded, the eyebrows ever so slightly thinner than average for his sex, the upper lip more defined. These features were framed partly by a short head of hair, and the face was far from the picture of femininity, but a profound shadow of disconnect and repulsion pervaded his consciousness. _I'm no less shallow than they are, but maybe I can change that._

He stood still for a moment, then shrugged, removed his sandals, and lay back with his feet at the mercy of the waves.

In the brief void after this event, Sabrina felt disorientation and... was it sympathy? The water might as well have been drowning her as her consciousness became one with Marshall's again.

Now he was sitting before a computer monitor, his mouth agape. Looking at the Aberdeen Society for Cryonics Research website, his innards felt heavy. _How have I not heard about this after so many years?_

He glanced out a window. That same storm was raging outside. _We've had the means to preserve our dead against brain decay, knowing how likely it is that we'll be able to revive them in the near future – and almost_ no one _gives more than a cursory look at this? Human lives are at stake!_

Several minutes later, he gave a last editorial look at the draft of what he thought was the most important message he would ever send to his friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and even known enemies. It was imperative that this letter be perfectly worded, as he knew too much about humans to hold the naive belief that reason alone would win them over.

He was a centimeter away from sending it, then his finger pulled away as if it had touched a burning stove top. No. It was too soon. They were just not ready.

Hitting that "send" button would be tantamount to outing himself as a flat-earther. Indeed, he collected the key points of cryonics' critics, supposing he'd almost certainly overlooked some pseudoscientific undertones. Barring that, there must have been _some_ practical or ethical issues, what with the cost and loss of potential organ donations.

Yet the logic was impeccable. With scientists willing to develop the "cure" and a few financial cutbacks – a smaller cup of coffee here, a less obscenely large meal there – society could save real lives from the permanence of death. Sure, those exoskeletons were promising, but even they were subject to mortality in emergencies, and only the proverbial one percent, if that, could afford them.

Were he a legislative authority, he'd integrate cryonics into health care laws immediately. But this was where he needed to slow down.

Marshall sighed. No matter how reasoned he would try to be, there was no circumventing the human system. They'd inevitably see him as another well-intentioned loon trying to raise taxes in order to secure a distorted version of "rights." And if he took a more "just try my idea" approach, he would end up socially alienating himself at best.

"God help us all," he muttered as he saved the draft. Just in case.

He told himself to take another step back, to doff the cynic's hat for a moment. Perhaps they were ready. At least one of them. From the same objective standpoint, he also found that it would be wise not only to start small, but also to make the humility of his thesis more explicit.

Zach. If anyone would receive his message with both charity and critical skepticism, Zach would. He brought the message back up to make such changes as were necessary for it not to sound like mass e-mail. Minutes later, all that remained was the matter of narrowing the recipient.

The top of the correspondence form now read, "To: Isaac Livingston."

Sabrina's foray back into the emptiness consisted of disturbance, then a different sense of fading out.

CHAPTER 23

She emerged into another pitch black prison. The inside door handle resisted force, but that was what the back-up plan was for. Not to worry. Waiting, she dwelt on how irritating it was to be dependent on someone else, even Uriah. Especially Uriah.

The door remained shut.

Without the machine's hum, Sabrina should have been able to at least hear him scrambling to reach the handle, but all that met her ears was silence.

She took a lesson from what she'd witnessed in the Mindscape, hesitating to jump to irrational conclusions. Perhaps the walls were just too thick to let much, if any, sound reach from the outside. Uriah could simply be exhausted.

But these were the real irrational conclusions, and she knew it. The simplest explanation was that Uriah wasn't the one who had shut the Mindscape down. It was Zolnerowich. Uriah was dead, so was Jane. The secret was lost. It was over.

And she was buried alive.

She felt around for whatever buttons were there, supposing it was not yet time to rule out less devastating possibilities. They did nothing. It was impossible even to tell how helpful the Mindscape's air holes would be for someone left inside indefinitely. Not that that made any difference. Death by asphyxiation would probably be more bearable and quick than dehydration. She beat her fists against the wall like a desperate child, sinking to the chamber floor.

_Cry me a river, at least you aren't Marshall. Framed so horribly, after a lifetime of gender dysphoria – which you only escaped thanks to technology, by the way – that your life will be absolute hell if you're somehow rejuvenated from the Dethroning._ That's what Dad would've told her. God, if only she'd known who Marshall really was, before this all exploded.

She tried to actually think about solutions, but what was the use? Livingston had planned this, possibly with Marshall, and if he was half as meticulous as he'd always been, there were no loopholes here. And even if she escaped, what then? Tough guy or not, Dad was dead, and she knew worse than nothing about how to restore vitrified bodies. Cheryl – there wouldn't be a chance to reconcile with her, to forgive her for treating Dad like that, not where she was going. She would die having killed a child she'd brought into this world, so what sane God would let her through the pearly gates?

More poundings on the chamber interior fell on deaf ears. Sabrina made herself as comfortable as was possible in this cold capsule, closing her eyes and trying to get some perspective on the situation. If she was going to die here, what thoughts did she want to be her last?

Cowering in the foxhole was no option. She had no right to expect a miracle or absolution, but that hardly stopped her from thinking about what her last prayer was going to sound like.

Sabrina heard the echo of Uriah's words: "If you haven't said it to me already, it would be fake if ya told me now." Uriah... she liked to think she'd dispelled that shallow attraction to him from before. But now, the very words he'd used to criticize last impressions had created such a jarring last impression on her, she had to respect the man.

Dad had always said the highest forms of love are built on respect.

So whatever she was going to say to the being who loved her more than anyone else could, it had better be worth respecting, a reflection of what her actions could say louder.

Something blasted a hole through the wall, just a few inches above her head.

* * * *

Her eyes were wide open, her heart had skipped a beat, and her breathing came heavy and slow. She got up, not daring to make a sound as she slipped the EM gun out of her pocket, back against the wall.

More shots let in streams of light, turning the chamber into Charlie Brown's ghost costume.

That was more light than they should have brought.

An unfamiliar, husky feminine voice declared, "I can hear your breath. Come out without a fight. If I see a weapon in your hand or hear you shove it into your pocket, that gun gets the same treatment this wall did. I don't want to hurt you, it's just that Mindscapes are soundproof and I needed to communicate with you before you blasted me with an EMP."

She did not lift the blaster. "How do I know you won't kill me when you let me out?"

"Because I would've done so right now if I wanted to. The only other possibility would be that I wanted information out of you before killing you, but I could just as easily get it without letting you out."

This would've been compelling, but knowing how Livingston's mind worked, it seemed exactly like the sort of bait-and-switch he'd pull for incomprehensible motives. He didn't need logic to constrain his way of getting what he wanted. Just the prospect of screwing someone over, after giving them every reason not to believe they'd be screwed over, was clearly his idea of heaven.

"In fact, I saved your life. This isn't a ventilated device, not when it's powered down." Pause. "And... I was built to serve you. I'm incapable of intentionally harming you."

_What?_ "How dumb do you think I am?"

"Dumb enough to know when it's best to just give in and trust me. Please, I don't want you to starve in there. Drop the gun."

The android was right. "Okay, but only if you drop yours." She kept up her end of the bargain and stepped toward the door.

The robot who let her out could only be called breathtaking. She had the human resemblance of Jane, yet every feature conformed so much to Sabrina's ideal of the human form it was uncanny. Modest as the bot was, she wasn't enticing in the usual way – it was more a special quality of beauty to which no biological person could aspire.

"Who are you?" Sabrina whispered.

"Artemis." She raised her hands over her shoulders. "Do you trust me now?"

"Yes." There was no indecision, which she rationalized during their conversation as an attempt to disarm Artemis. Logically, it was clear this was a last-ditch scheme of Livingston's, but she began to find it difficult to be logical. "Where is Dennis?"

Artemis smiled. "Don't worry about him. He's safe. You're safe. You don't have to worry about Jane or Livingston anymore." She wrapped an arm around her as they walked toward the staircase.

"How do you know all this?" Sabrina had to look up slightly to face her, and when she did it was difficult to turn away. The android returned the eye lock.

"Because I know you as well as you know yourself. Probably better."

"Marshall Patterson designed you, didn't he?"

"Don't remind me." Even when she discussed something irritating, she did it with calm grace. "He's gone now. Livingston, too."

She pulled away a bit. "If you're supposed to serve me, why did you kill the only people in the world who knew what I need to know? My parents are cryonic – they need me."

"I know what you need to know, because you do." They stepped out into the near-midnight. A robo-car was parked in Livingston's driveway. "You just don't know it."

"Okay, now I know this is a setup." Sabrina turned away and broke off from her by several feet. "Artemis, I'm not about to discard my brain because you're –"

"Everything you ever found worth loving in a person?"

"Yeah, right. Livingston's not 'gone,' you're just under his control." She folded her arms, focusing all her will on defending herself from what Artemis was obviously doing. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault, but I can't love you knowing you're manipulating me."

"I'm not manipulating you." Walking into Sabrina's line of sight, her eyes were warm and sincere. "Really, the secret to restoring those people has been in your mind all this time. Ever since Livingston said, 'This is for you, Jane.'"

"You don't say? Tell me, then."

"It isn't that simple." Artemis approached her with open arms. "Sabrina, listen to me very carefully. I'll be honest: I can't tell you why you should believe me when I say I have good reasons for keeping the secret. All I can ask from you is that you have a little faith."

She rested her hands on Sabrina's shoulders. "That I'm doing this so you can figure the answer out for yourself. You know in your heart that the highest forms of love are built on respect, and I respect you too much to make life easy for you."

"You think this is about faith?" She swiped the robotic palms off. "You expect me to have faith in you when not long ago I went through the worst pain of my life? When Livingston could drag me back to hell whenever he damn well pleases? You wanna talk faith? Let's talk faith. My faith tells me creations like you are what got us all in this cesspool in the first place!"

Artemis seemed on the brink of tears. "Remember how you felt after Michael was born?"

"What?"

"You had doubts. They weren't necessarily about your beliefs, but about your ability to make tough decisions based on your experience. On those moments that gave you a reason to think it was worth it to keep going, for yourself or for someone else." If eyes were windows to the soul, and if a robot could possess such a thing, Artemis was opening those windows up completely. "That's the kind of faith I mean, Sabrina. If you let me help you help yourself, I promise you you'll never lose it."

She bit her lip, looking down. It was Michael all over again, but now that she regretted what she'd done to him, what was there left to do? Was it just aesthetics that made this so painful? In that moment when she had ended her son's life, he'd been a freak, an evil, abstract other.

What was wrong with her? She was an absolute wretch, and she hated herself for that.

And now Artemis had come, like... like...

"Okay." Sabrina embraced her servant, her eyes watering. "Okay, I'll go with you. Wherever you want me to. I just have no other –"

"Shh." The bot ran her fingers through her master's hair. "I understand."

* * * *

The automated vehicle was all but a bona fide limousine. They sat across from each other, absentmindedly looking up at the reflection of a hotel-esque floor. For Organics, there was a decent selection of drinks to the side. Upon fiddling with the controls by her seat, Sabrina found that one could alter the view out the side windows to mimic any of many landscapes.

"Most people think it's impossible to simulate the authenticity of a 'real' environment with that," said Artemis, who seemed pleased with a scene remarkably like Sabrina's dream forest. "But I'm sure you know there's a psychology to this. You can know it's not real, even what the chemicals are that make you feel as if it's real, but the experience is the same. We're in a forest."

"We are," she muttered. This was what she was giving up. Opulence. Status. Artistic immersion. Perhaps even health. She knew she'd chosen to forgo her legacy when she sojourned to the moon as an Organic, but why? That had been before she'd opened her eyes to the emptiness, or at least what had once appeared to be emptiness, of material goods. But now she wasn't so sure. She'd heard, even before her conversion, of the myopic hedonism of the upper-class life, and the dissatisfaction that entailed. Where would the simple life lead her? Only to a dead end, it seemed.

She regarded the window, then the drinks, then Artemis. The android laid her hand gently on Sabrina's knee.

Mental stagnation, years spent trying to dispel guilt, a complete waste of the potential of the senses God had given her – these awaited her, should she stay. And for what? All so she could be welcomed anyway at the lake of fire, like the sinner she was?

Sabrina poured herself some wine.

"Artemis, I know you said I should trust you, and I do, but I have some questions. First, where did you come from?"

"I escaped from the Sloan Bio-Bazaar. That was the store Uriah almost got buried under. He never saw me because I was in the locked 'bomb shelter.'"

"Why would Marshall put you in there?"

"I'm not sure. My memories only stretch back to yesterday evening, when a robot activated me and tried to take me into custody. I destroyed it and the other bots in my way. All I could think about was finding you."

_Yesterday evening?_ That was when she'd gotten out of the Mindscape in Goodsprings. Good or bad, Artemis was probably designed with the info Livingston had extracted from the Mindscape's mind analysis. "So when you got here, what happened to Dennis?"

"I sent a protected scout into the basement to take him into a car. Naturally, he put up a fight and the bot had to stun him, but I have a feeling he'll ease up when he finds out that Livingston's gone for good."

"But how? I mean, you're still working. It couldn't have been the satellite."

"That's exactly what it was. But it wasn't an EMP the satellite used. It was a virus."

Her mouth fell open. "That's so obvious!"

"Obvious, not _easy_." She smiled again, that ingratiating simper which would've mystified Sabrina if she were considering that Artemis was a robot. "Zolnerowich and her advisers never would've figured it out because they'd already tried using computer viruses, and those didn't work. Only someone who was in on Livingston's and Marshall's plan could have designed the right virus, and they had that one person on the moon the whole time."

"Who?"

After a long pause, she answered, "Vlad."

"What?" Sabrina almost stood up. "I don't even –"

"Dear, if you're going to live in this new world, you'll have to accept that there are a lot of things you thought you knew, but that you've been completely wrong about for years. We can't even be sure this virus hasn't been nullified by some backup Livingston has." The hand, which felt just like a human hand, slid gently up her forearm. "But the truth will set you free."

She covered her face with a hand, wishing Artemis couldn't see her in such a vulnerable state. Charming as the android was, she was respectable, after all. Getting this emotional in front of her was like tearing up in the presence of a childhood hero.

"Patsy or not, Mr. Ivanov saved us all."

"I want to know," she said in a shaky voice. "Where did you learn all this?"

"I met Jane along my way to Livingston's place. She'd gotten through to Luna and found out what happened. So she was headed where I was going, and I told her that wasn't where she would find what she was looking for."

"Yes, it was. I was there, and you said I have the knowledge of how to reverse the Dethroning."

"Who said that's what she was looking for?" She leaned back, giving Sabrina some space. "There's more than one way to give Jane what she wants, and clearly bringing a co-conspirator in this madness back right now isn't the answer. Sure, Livingston's basement had a Mindscape, but you were in it and I had to disable that thing before you fainted."

Come to think of it, Sabrina had felt rather weak after the journey into Marshall's mind, and being deprived of nutrition probably played a part in that. She took another sip and checked the cooler for something to eat. "How could a Mindscape help? From what Dennis told me, Livingston already put her in one before, and that didn't work."

"That's because the 'Marshall' in Jane's experiences then wasn't Marshall. Livingston was performing a test on her, and if I understand his motives right, he never wanted to keep Jane too pacified at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Sabrina, look at what happened to the guy. Even if you think he took way too much power for his own good, he was falsely accused by Uriah. I think a lot of this has all been for the purpose of torturing your friend, partly anyway."

"I see." While she let this sink in, a bird sang. "So there was never anything special about Marshall that a Mindscape couldn't recreate."

"Of course not. Whatever you make of it, there really isn't anything in a human greater than the sum of its molecules."

_No. I won't accept that._ "But, Artemis, isn't there something in you that makes you more than a system of machinery?"

"I _am_ a machine, just a machine built to love."

The vehicle came to a stop.

"Come on," said Artemis. "It's time to find that answer you've always had."

* * * *

At midnight, Artemis stopped Sabrina from opening the door, whose window now showed Nevada's only Cryonics Institute.

"Sabrina, remember that the robots in there are live again. Maybe we're a little better than we would be with Livingston controlling them, but that was the easy part. Now that no one at all can handle them – now that they're as free as I am, only they exist to serve this building – we have our work cut out for us."

"Got it. But," she said with a bit of a squint, "you made me leave my EM gun."

"Check under the seat."

She knelt by the artificial leather lounge, which on closer inspection had a storage cubby accessible simply by pressing the foot inward. There were about a dozen devices inside that appeared clunkier than typical electromagnetic weapons, yet that was a virtue if it was an indicator of power.

"Those each have a Genius system that homes in on likely targets by itself. Just squeeze lightly on the left trigger to disable that if you need to. Also..."

She took one blaster and aimed it at her forehead. "Don't worry, I'm just programming it to turn away from me if I get in its line of fire. Again, left trigger gets rid of that, but I'd prefer it if you didn't." Artemis smirked, not the least worried that her master might terminate her.

"Any other robots I shouldn't aim for?"

"No, but there is a human in a robot's body I'd prefer to stay alive."

"Dennis?"

She nodded. "Michael, too."

"How did they –?"

"The bot who escorted them here got them through security. Said it was for classified testing, which it technically is, and with some tactics Zolnerowich gleaned from records of Livingston's behavior this past week, the plan was pretty easy."

"So why don't we do the same?"

Artemis stepped outside, looking impatient. "Suffice it to say these buggers are smart. They're not gonna fall for the same scheme twice, and even if they would, there's some business to do in this place that doesn't exactly involve complying with standard procedure."

Clearly it wasn't the time to ask any more questions. "So, like it or not, we're gonna have to get our hands dirty?" Sabrina stopped in front of the entrance beside the robot, holding her weapon out with both hands.

"Basically."

She shot a beam out from her hand at the lock-box above, shoving a door aside and sprinting in.

Sabrina took another look at her gun, her one means to bring down this technological empire, and found another switch Artemis hadn't shown her. An imprinting depicted waves leaving the barrel while its stick-figure holder clearly left his finger off the trigger.

She looked back at the limo. The last thing they needed was for their mission to come to an anticlimax, all because some police bot spotted their vehicle this late at night. Leaving her modified blaster inside and returning to the automobile, she tapped at the "driver" window.

"Pardon me, but I have some quick things to do in here. I left an item in the back."

The robot chauffeur unlocked the car, giving her access to one of the auxiliary weapons. Auto-shoot enabled, the gun found its way into the wrappings of a thin blanket, on the ground with its barrel exposed. She'd deduced that there were no cameras in the main body of the limo, but outside she was less certain.

Sabrina walked inside nonchalantly, relieved to find the first gun where she'd left it. In her hands, it locked onto one section of the atrium's ceiling, then another, a third. Several more spaces succumbed to the electromagnetism, yet if she hadn't possessed a weapon this advanced, she would never have suspected that security machines might reside in such places.

Artemis, in the center of the darkened room, spun as she fired off pulses in every direction with astonishing competence. Stressful as the pandemonium was on them, knowing there were likely stunners built into at least a few of these devices, it was almost silent initially. The androids, which required no audible alarms to deal with an intruder, stepped into her impeded view within less than a minute.

Sabrina sensed a jolt, seizing up in place – which was, at the time, a stance of pointing her gun straight at a bot's face. It crashed at the command of Artemis's palm, as did the others, whose pinpricks of red light faded away as if covered by a second curtain of night.

_Yes!_ Her nervous system regained normality, coming with a vengeance as she felt the EM gun jerk in those seconds before she got a grip on it. She let the blaster fry the right wall while Artemis incapacitated another wave of robots.

Sabrina's breaths were labored by the time the gun found no more targets. Only her spaceflights had been more dangerous. She joined the last robot standing, whom she could see just by the slight shine of the fake black hair.

"Whew! How'd you not get nuked in seconds?"

"Because security bots don't use EMPs except as a last resort," she said grimly. They strode toward the hall, starting another round of pulses. "Until it's too late to deal with a 'droid like me, they try to hack a robot into submission, but given the circumstances..."

Again, while Sabrina let the gun do its thing, her journeys into immobility lasted not nearly as long as those who'd designed security intended. The chaos died down, and Artemis shot her a suspicious look.

"So what's keeping you from freezing over and over again?"

"This little guy," she said, flipping the switch to off. She was almost enjoying this, at least more so than Artemis seemed to be. "Makes the gun hit what it's aiming for without my input. I guess the Genius was smart enough to find the device that determines how long the stun is."

The android nodded with approval.

"Hey, if I'm gonna 'find the answer' by myself, I'd better be able to get outta such a simple mess without your help, right?" Her eyes darted around the hall for stairs. "Something tells me an elevator would be our death sentence."

Artemis peeked into the numerous niches, apparently not satisfied with what she saw. "Which is exactly why there are no stairways here. Although I don't expect there to be any security to prevent us from, say, cutting a hole out of the elevator ceiling and trying to get up the chute..."

"Count me out, I'm not strong enough for that, even if I did want to gamble my life on an expectation."

"What choice do you have?"

She wasn't prepared to take that as a rhetorical question. "Come with me." She reactivated the auto on her way to the exit, deciding not to push her luck.

It was actually brighter outside, with the streetlights a few meters away. She beckoned for Artemis to follow her to the back exterior, behind which loomed the moon, challenging her with all its associations.

"What floor are we aiming for?" Sabrina said, squinting.

"Third."

That was approachable through a window, but how to get level with it? She looked around. No cherry-pickers, ladders, or crates to stack. Then a door caught her eye.

"'Fire escape' – here we are."

Artemis blasted its lock off. As she was about to fling the door open, Sabrina inhaled a breath of horror. She caught the robot's arm.

"Wait! I just realized something. Don't you think the bots in there would've learned from their mistakes? If you go in there now, they'll kill you with an EMP."

She was smiling again. "You're right. Go ahead, wreak havoc and let me know when there's no more risk that I'll have my mind erased."

Sabrina's heart thumped as if approaching a gallows, and she made a crack of an opening, thrusting her arm in and leaving the rest to the gun.

An android paralyzed her again, but before the source could be destroyed, it confiscated the weapon and, near as she could tell in this state, disabled the auto-shoot. She was completely impotent now, but it said something about Marshall's programming skill that she was more concerned for Artemis's life by this point.

One robot stepped outside to eliminate another.

_Please don't be her,_ she silently pleaded to the machine that caused a thudding noise to enter her ears. The silence was not promising.

She wanted to scream, but the automaton that returned seized her by the upper arm and led her back to the front of the property. Her peripheral vision revealed the outline of a feminine figure, motionless on the ground.

Just as she realized where it had taken her, she broke out of her stationary state and watched her captor crash down. _The gun!_

The car had seen too much. She retrieved the weapon and dashed to the driver's seat. The autopilot didn't put up a fight, but it was only a matter of time before the police would come to the scene of the distress call.

At that moment, when she could get a more comprehensive look at her fallen comrade, something snapped in Sabrina. Her rush toward the stairs, her blind annihilation of those androids that had not a fraction of Artemis's heart, was a declaration of defiance to the clockwork of the universe. To the death, the emotional manipulation, the total inhumanity of beings who called themselves human.

It wasn't an act of rage, for she didn't feel angry. She felt nothing, really. The numbness was what made it so easy to do what she knew Artemis would've wanted her to do. This was a plunge down the water slide, nothing more and nothing less.

At the bottom of the slide she found the body whose memory had laid bloody in the back of her mind, haunting her for days. She could just barely make out his distorted facial features in the gloom, and several inches below a pistol ascended so that it pointed right at her.

His mouth stayed shut as his feet crept down the steps.

Sabrina lifted her own weapon, which was adjusting its aim for Livingston. It could've been so easy, he would be dead in an instant and the same would go for every other one of his sick clones. Yet she flicked off the auto-shoot, backing away with wide eyes keeping glued to his but steadily shaping into something more confident.

"Your fear won't work ever again, Zach." She cast the blaster onto the floor. He positioned the gun under her chin, but she could scarcely feel a bone inside her tremble. "All the nonsense you've thrown in my way, no matter how much I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, has been a colossal waste of your time. You wanna break me, make me murder my own identity by murdering you. All you wanted from me was a free choice, but that's what makes it so easy to deny you."

Livingston stared at her just the same.

"That's the problem with real hate. Like real love, you can't really force it out of someone – if you do, it's not authentic, is it? But I can help you make this worth the trouble. You have two ways to go here. Kill me now, go out to live a life you know will be miserable because you did all this to sell your values and make others do the same, and there's nothing to show for it.

"Or," she said as she pressed the powerless machinery in his hand down to his side, "you can change and help us all create the vision you told me you wanted all along. Maybe that was just you pretending to be Marshall, I don't care. Better to live for the purpose of encouraging people to do good they never thought they were capable of, than to get them to do the same with evil. If you think I'm gonna tell you you're a good guy underneath, forget it. What you _do_ now makes the difference."

The figure, shaded in the doorway while she stood just outside, remained like a statue for nine very long seconds. At last he stepped out of the darkness and, striding away without looking back at her again, said, "I'll take a third option."

Sabrina gave him a few more moments, bending slowly to pick up the EM gun, then raised it, aimed at that wrecked skull, and pulled the trigger.

* * * *

Not far from where Livingston had appeared, Sabrina saw a Transhuman holding his fist out, a ring on his index finger.

"Dennis!" she blurted.

He wasn't startled by the blaster in her hand, which had understandably refrained from targeting a Transhuman. He simply took her hand without a word and bounded down toward the emergency exit.

She broke free before the last step. The numbness evolved into quiet resolution. "I'm not leaving here."

"Yeah, well, I am, 'cause guess what I don't wanna do? Get stunned."

_He can take care of himself._ "Okay, then go, but don't come running to me with any questions when you find what's out there." She returned to the upper landing. "I have to do this."

Uriah made no move to impede her.

She didn't have to look hard for the right room. It was the one with light flowing out into the narrow hall through a window. With some irrational apprehension, she crossed to the door.

Where was Michael? The possibility of his being irreversibly dead had disappeared from her mind, for now more than any time before, the aim of her current existence was in sharp focus. If the pain was going to be there forever, it might as well be for the sake of the only source of innocence left in her life. Her son's death was as inconceivable as backward time travel, which if feasible would shatter truth as she knew it. Truth was all she had.

An MRI machine. She was beside it in a nanosecond.

And there he was. Lifeless, but there was hope in his non-mutilated brain. He could just be like her father, in some legally dead sleep from which he might emerge if she were as smart as Artemis had believed.

Sabrina pressed the boy to her chest, yet even now she could not let herself cry. Not if she wanted to show him real love.

The door slid open behind her, then shut.

She wanted to slap him right there, but she couldn't let go of Michael, so she turned around and stared with all the austerity left inside her. "You asshat. Why'd you leave him? What, when the risk runs high, you'd sell your son down the river?"

He looked mildly ticked, then sighed and put both hands up. "All right, I can explain, but it's clear something else was upsetting you back there and I wanna know what."

"I'm not talking about it. I need to restore my son back to life before the cryoprotectants lose their effect, and if Artemis was onto something, I need to do that here, now, and _by myself_."

"Who the hell is Artemis?"

Sabrina ignored Uriah, taking a seat in the cold, sterile room. She closed her eyes, racking her brain for the solution, but nothing came. It was the ultimate cruelty on the part of fate or nature or God or whatever, stonewalling her now that she had a time limit. The pressure was too much.

"Please listen to me."

She collected the facts. Clearly the plan involved analysis of Michael's brain, if not also Uriah's. But a Transhuman couldn't get an MRI, which meant...

"So that's why you left," she said.

Uriah had followed her gaze. "Oh, sure, I would've gladly stuck around otherwise. Cryonics Institute bots are so nice."

Why couldn't he just be serious? "And you couldn't take Michael out because –"

"Took ya long enough to figure out, yeah." He relaxed enough to grab a chair and join her.

For the first time, she saw in his downcast eyes an expression of sincere paternal sorrow. He'd never chosen to be Michael's father, yet he seemed heartbroken by the boy's distance. Maybe it was only because he'd had time to process Pat's perishing before Sabrina met him, or perhaps tragedy in any child's life would incur sharp emotional pain for him, but this reunion with a frozen son troubled him more than the prospect of his girlfriend's or his own death.

"I'm sorry, Sabrina. For everything."

"That's 'fake,' by your own standards." Still, she tried to smile, though this came out only as a wry reminder of the predicament. "Let's just find the antidote."

He returned the favor with his expression. "Well, it appears if we wanna do that, you'll need to cut my skull open."

"But didn't you just say –?"

"I think there's a huge difference between a bot doing that and you." Uriah stood, inspecting the room. "If I had to guess, I'd say our best bet is to see what's special about my brain compared to the human Popsicles in the other rooms. Knowing what prevents the Dethroning might be as good as knowing what reverses it."

"You expect me to know how to spot a brain anomaly without any medical training whatsoever? I was only able to put you in the Libertas because Livingston gave me instructions."

"Well there's nothing else we can do!"

"That's not what Artemis – long story, explaining it to you wouldn't help – thought." Sabrina now paced the floor, trying to see the broader picture for any clues. "What if we're asking the wrong question?"

"What if that's the wrong question?" said Uriah, leaning against the wall now as he focused on his feet.

"No, I'm serious. Dennis, what if the reason you survived the Dethroning wasn't anything special about you? What if it was just your choice to track down Livingston that made him keep you immune on purpose?"

"That's absurd. If he was trying to get revenge on me all this time, why would he do that when he could've stopped me before I set off the trigger?"

"No one ever said this was about revenge. I think it runs deeper than that. Hear me out – Livingston's been pressuring both of us to do some sick things we'd never dream of doing if our lives depended on it otherwise. You gave your body, and I..."

She was grateful that he nodded as if he'd filled in the blanks, but he spoke up before she could continue. "Giving up my body wasn't sick, Sabrina." He kept his gaze on those feet. "Gambling so many people's lives on nothing more than Pat's word was. Hating anyone who gave up their body was. And no, that won't _ever_ excuse the sicker things our oppressors have done, but two wrongs don't make a right."

There wasn't anything she could say to that. She didn't want to come across as insensitive, but time was running out. "A-Anyway, it – could've all just been for his amusement."

"I can't accept that." Uriah's eyes jumped at light-speed to hers. "People just don't act that way."

Sabrina crossed her arms. "I would've said the same before, but this is a man whose friend wanted people to find true trust in the ones they loved, and he nearly lost his life because of the trust you put in –"

"I get it." He glared.

After some vague thought, she headed for the door. "I need some time to think. Just... watch Michael for me."

Uriah might have protested, but the barrier silenced him.

She thought back to what Artemis had said, walking back to where she'd left the robot. The answer was in her, and it had been there since the moment Livingston tried to vitrify her. But if Uriah's theory was right, why did Artemis come at all? She'd all but stated this was Sabrina's time to make her stand, no assistance required.

There she was, dead as the day Marshall had made her.

Made, just like Jane.

Sabrina knew what she had to do.

CHAPTER 24

"It all came back to Goodsprings." She brought Jane into the MRI room, to Uriah's surprise.

"Of course she would've told you that she knew nothing about Marshall's secrets, because it's her purpose to secure his interests. However," she said as she plucked Michael out of his arms and into Jane's, "a Mindscape tells all, including the sort of info a man would confide in the woman he'd designed to be perfectly trustworthy. In the end, Livingston might not've believed in the honor system, but Marshall did."

"What can she do?" said Uriah, who started to take his son back from Jane, but Sabrina got between them. "Besides stab us in the back again, I mean."

"Just trust me on this." Not that she wasn't a little apprehensive herself, but it made too much sense not to try it. She turned to Jane. "Go ahead."

The crimson-haired android looked away with meek eyes, then sighed. "If you'll keep your promise..." She lifted Michael's face closer and pressed her lips to his.

Nothing happened.

"Mind explaining why she just did that?" said Uriah.

"Be patient. It takes time for anything to travel from the mouth throughout the body." She beamed at him. "Oh, don't you see, Dennis? Livingston said Marshall wanted to make everyone their own Jane, so doesn't it make sense that he would put the antidote in the robots he was making? It's kind of romantic, each person waking up in a better world and the first thing they see is their soul mate."

"So the plan was, anyway."

The somewhat bitter tone in which he said this reminded her of the insensitivity of her comment. "I wasn't implying anything. I mean, sometimes what's romantic isn't what's best for people in the long run."

"No, maybe you're right. Maybe Marshall was right."

Jane huffed.

In a few moments, he got the hint. " _Is_ right. You get the idea. If Pat hadn't lied to me –"

"We'd all be under Marshall's thumb. Or Livingston's. I'm still not sure how much they collaborated. But that's not important – we're free, that's what matters."

Uriah was caught off guard by that remark. He looked out a window. No moon there, as far as she could see. "Yeah, but at what cost? She's probably dead after so many days vitrified, not according with Marshall's plan. Even if she isn't, can I trust her anymore? And..." He trailed off.

"And what?"

He avoided eye contact. "Sabrina, please don't be mad at me for this. I, well, haven't been entirely honest with you."

The part of her that said, _Well, at least he's owning up to it now,_ was substantially smaller than the side saying, _Oh God, what did he do?_

"You know how you weren't much at all religious when we first met?"

She nodded, a little less anxious now.

"It wasn't always that way. You used to be a Christian. Not the kind you are now, though. That's why Zolnerowich wanted me to father the next generation instead of you just taking some, er, donations."

Sabrina put her chin in her hand briefly. "What do you mean, not the kind I am now?"

"Well, for one thing, you probably wouldn't've been willing to put me in this body if Livingston hadn't messed with your brain."

She made a hollow laugh. _You couldn't be more wrong._ If that had been the case, she would've had a very different past. "So you're saying that either I would've believed a lie if all of this hadn't happened, or I'm believing a lie right now?"

"If you wanna think of it that way, sure."

They couldn't add anything to that sentiment. What is there to say when you find out that you basically lost your identity because of a machine? Yet from a more objective view of recent events, perhaps it wasn't so unfortunate to have relinquished that identity. For now identity was extricable from beliefs. Strange. All the crap she'd put up with over these past few days, and they were the only ones, for years now, that had felt in some way imbued with purpose. There was both peace and repulsiveness in that thought.

"Mama?"

That freakish son of hers hopped out of Jane's caress into that of his mother.

Sabrina wished she could've just embraced the child and left it at that. Uriah would realize he'd loved her all along and they would start the first family of a new era. This era would rebuild itself upon the values of _Godly Simplicity_ , with the Dethroned reawakening only once they were ready to.

But life was never that simple. There was no choice to delay the reverse-vitrification, not when there remained the probability that the Dethroned would die if they chose that. The citizens of Luna would vehemently stifle her movement anyway, and Uriah was a human being, not Artemis. His will wouldn't bend to hers.

Even indulging in pure affection for Michael was easier in theory than practice. At that moment – when she saw the almost physically mature yet fragile boy bury his head in her chest, while Uriah's warmth of heart appeared to match his previous sadness – she knew his father's dilemma.

Just as Pat's lie seemed the cause of a greater good, what was Sabrina to make of a kid born to be a pawn in some evil men's chess game, brought into the world through his mother's greatest agonies of both body and conscience?

She hugged him tighter.

* * * *

"Just why did you wait so long to contact us?" said Zolnerowich. "And where is Mr. Uriah?"

"We were under time constraints, Governess." Sabrina looked down, biting her lip, at the neatly polished conference table of Aberdeen Police Department. The androids had repaired the communications system since the time Jane and Uriah had gone their separate ways.

She remembered Artemis and put her chin up. "As for Dennis, I've sworn not to disclose his location."

"We can find him easily enough –"

"No, you can't. Go ahead, see what happens when you try to conduct a search." _She'll probably take me up on that challenge._ She put her folded hands on the table, staring Zolnerowich down. "Listen, Governess, before I explain just what happened between the time you contacted Jane and now, I want to make this clear. I'm as loyal to my country, or what remains of it, as I ever was. But if you expect me, as the only woman capable of keeping the human race alive for generations to come, to be loyal, then I expect loyalty from you and the rest of the government. You may be leaders, but you're also representatives, and I think that if you ask the people of Luna what they want done about the Dethroning, they'll say they want what I happen to want."

The faces of the men and women sitting with Zolnerowich, some of whom were observing the screens below, featured a mix of horror, gravity, skepticism, and noncommittal openness. Zolnerowich herself was filled mostly with the latter, yet there was a hint of pride reminiscent of their discourse a week ago.

"Well said, but I have a few objections. First, much as I congratulate you for the care you have given to your child in spite of tremendous adversity" – she nodded toward Michael, who was playing with a toy action figure Sabrina had picked up earlier – "I fail to see how the sustenance of humanity depends on you anymore. Obviously you and Artemis have found a means to restore the vitrification victims."

_She doesn't know..._ "True, but the means would normally involve each victim's being personally revived by Jane, and as you can imagine, over six billion people would take at least two centuries to bring back."

"Normally."

"Yes. That might not be a problem for the first ones to return, but even if that didn't create a serious ethical concern for us about deciding who these first ones would be, it's not certain we can restore anyone who's had this much time to gain temperature."

Zolnerowich leaned in. "Miss Lockhart, did you ever wonder where all the vitrified had gone?"

Sabrina furrowed her brow.

"You may have found a way to stop surveillance now, but just after Mr. Livingston's downfall that was not the case. Think about it. Where might the bodies have gone if you have not seen a single one on the streets or in buildings?"

"Oh my God." She looked at nowhere in particular, processing the implications. "But he –"

"Was a man who, though gravely mistaken to the point of delusion, found himself victimized by Mr. Uriah's impulsive violence, and who had the bravery to end his life with a gesture of penance."

"You're defending him?"

"No. I am condemning your friend."

Friend? It was not an inappropriate term for Uriah, yet she had simply never thought of him as a "friend." An ally, sure, a co-conspirator against hierarchical insanity and Livingston's ultimate subversion of liberty, but she couldn't remember the last time a friend had been locked in the basement of an Amish house with her. Friends share raucous laughter, see movies, shoot the breeze.

"J-Just why have you condemned him?"

"Because I have reason to believe he is a threat to his fellow humans if his brain remains as it is. Regardless of the intentions of the man he attempted to murder, Mr. Uriah did still _attempt murder_. He had insufficient basis for so strong a conviction of Mr. Livingston's guilt as to justify such a crime, and even if he knew Miss Mallard was a rape victim, it was reckless to take justice into his own hands."

"Can you blame him?" She folded her arms. "Face it, Governess, the social climate among every state dominated by the Robotic Revolution has been hostile towards people like him from the start. Were I not as high-class as I am, you and most other Transhumans in power would sell out my future, too."

Sabrina looked back at Michael. "And unless this world sees some major changes in the way it handles the responsibility of possessing this kind of technology, the kind that is the reason we're debating this at all, then I'm willing to test that claim."

"Pardon?"

"I used to accept grants from the government for my research at Luna, but considering I can't even trust that government with a satellite, much less the rights of my friend, I think you leave me no choice but to step down."

She knew what Zolnerowich was thinking: _I do not want to lose a scientist as competent as she, but I cannot show weakness._ "This is a mistake."

"A mistake on the part of society, yes. I don't know what I'm going to do for a living now. To be honest, I probably don't have it in me to follow through on what I said, not with a child to care for. That's why I want you – all of you – to please, own up to your deceit and help put this train wreck back on course. This just may be the last time I give you my trust, and the same goes for the rest of Luna. You wanna know why? Ask anyone who lives up there if they care for at least one Organic."

"None of us has anything against Organics."

"Oh, really? You only stand up for the equality of socialism when there are no bodies to feed. I bet my life that you'd be defending Dennis if he had gotten that Libertas transplant a few days earlier than he did."

She rested her head on interlocked fingers, looking at Sabrina's flawed eyes with her own perfect ones. Or was it the other way around?

No one spoke for what seemed like an Organic lifetime.

"Miss Lockhart, it is your conviction in the power of the individual to change the world that I find simultaneously your most respectable and most stupid belief. As an individual, you demonstrated admirable valor and a willingness to do the not-so-pleasant necessities of life, in order that you would do your community good. Yet you may excuse me when I say your political power is no greater than any other citizen's, and your delusion to the contrary does not accord with the sad reality."

Condescending as usual.

"That said, I have considered what you have said in this meeting, and I think everyone at this table would agree that we have learned something from you. Not just your words, but the actions that have permitted this conversation to take place at all." She turned her head both ways, not seeming to actually look for approval in the others' faces, but as if she knew they concurred.

"So, yes, I would expect nothing less from my fellow servants of the people than honesty about our role in recent military secrecy – beneficial as it turned out to be in hindsight," she added wryly. "With hope, the events of this past week will put international relations in perspective. Moreover, I am always ready to encourage dialogue on the ethics of robotic society.

"But for now, I suggest we find an alternative to the 'normal' way of reviving all Dethroned persons." _Even those who may very well be out to create the Singularity,_ her look seemed to append.

"What about Dennis?"

The governess smirked. "I have never heard of the man."

* * * *

Hydaburg, Alaska. Much colder than the milieu at which Marshall Patterson had discovered credible cryonics, but on the day Sabrina returned there on related business, there was a comparable front of rain clouds congregating. She had to agree, beholding the navy waters, that there was a sinister beauty to a storm. Besides knowing that technology – not just Jane, but the Libertas – had given him basic human happiness when no one else could, that was the closest she came to sympathy for a man who'd quite possibly instigated the Dethroning. When she had lived as him in the Mindscape, he'd had no sympathy for himself.

She didn't know what society planned to do with Marshall once he was restored. Uriah had made sure, she hoped, that Jane wouldn't revive him before the right time, but when the right time came, what then? Would he be able to live in peace knowing Jane had never really betrayed him?

And Livingston... well, he had perhaps gotten the better deal out of the two.

Sabrina found her parents' house. By Transhuman-class standards it was superficially modest. Though inside there had always been the comforts of a wealthy household, the exterior was a rectangular edifice that wouldn't even have impressed every Western citizen of the 2010s. No fountain or tennis court, but that didn't make it easier to ignore how shamelessly it outclassed the dilapidated homes it overlooked.

It occurred to her just outside the door that she had no key with her. That was okay. The back deck was accessible from ground level.

A breeze whipped her hair across her face as she climbed the wooden steps, while Michael clung to her side for warmth. At the top landing, the sight of the family totem pole made her burst out laughing. _It's okay, no one can hear you._

To the left, that was what she had come for. The telescope. It was still the afternoon, but she couldn't have cared less. Her right eye witnessed that faint, pale shape in the sky as a smile spread on her face, ear to ear.

It was missing something, of course. Some _one_. She turned toward the sliding door. Unlocked.

Sabrina's heart nearly stopped when she saw the two people sitting on the couch.

_How?_ As it happened, Livingston hadn't transported the bodies to Cryonics Institutes. Not most of them, anyway. She had already known that. Still, to find them here, not situated as if they had been vitrified in this position...

She retrieved a vial from her pocket. This was the not so "normal" answer to the revival problem, but would it work?

Kenneth and Cheryl found their way into the chairs on the deck, not being looked in the face by their daughter, who put the narrow end of the telescope over her father's eye. That was the easy part. It took a mountain of what some might call foolhardiness to tilt Cheryl's head down and place her grandson on her lap. They weren't old enough to get heart attacks from this, right?

Michael reached for the vial in vain as she removed its stopper. This was it. Revival.

The wait wasn't as bearable as it had been with Uriah when their son had transitioned, especially as she recalled Uriah's behavior in another room at the Nevada Cryonics Institute.

He had shot disturbed glances at the capsules of unfamiliar people he passed, but within a minute of entering he had frozen.

He dashed down a hallway of sorts separating groups of cryogenic chambers. When he stopped in front of one containing a tall, thin, serene-looking woman with dark hair that flowed beneath her shoulders, he broke down sobbing.

"God bless you, Isaac Livingston," Sabrina said under her breath.

EPILOGUE

She could see dust swimming through the air in a sunbeam. Uriah's body still lurked in the unlit section of the floor, as did the clunky cylinder with holes in its door. As this last was beyond repair, she would have to settle for what was only mentally Marshall. Not that that was what counted least.

If she left right now, it was quite possible that her lover would either die permanently or fall into the hands of the Lunar government, which even she was smart enough to know would be a darker arbiter of his fate than Death.

So why was she just standing there?

Jane's eyes drifted away from the suspended organism to that half-sphere. She crept over to it, lowered herself to her knees, and struck its surface with her fist as if knocking.

Uriah.

She remembered what he'd said about helping people he didn't care about. It was stupid, of course, but then why had he risked his life for Sabrina? Or her, for that matter? He only wanted to please one person, right?

She was he, so it was no wonder she had liked him. Still, it hurt to think about why she had liked him enough to save him, for she knew perfectly well there was no way she could've known benevolence to Uriah would give her access to Marshall.

Uriah's lifeless face stared at her with frozen contempt as she looked back. Oddly enough, that looked like the same expression that took form whenever the real Uriah had talked about what he'd thought Livingston did to Pat. It... reminded her of something. Something she'd seen in a memory Sabrina had taken her to. Whatever it was, it hovered just out of reach, vague and frustrating. She looked again at the device, then at the window through which a superabundance of light filtered.

Marshall was sitting up in bed, tapping away furiously at his handheld computer, as she stood in the way of the sunlight that would have obstructed him otherwise. She asked him what he was doing.

"Well, Janie, remember Mister Livingston? I've – found some things about his past. Horrible things, involving harm to a child. I think he's gonna hurt someone else, and considering he has the power to change the brain itself, to disturb people's thoughts themselves –"

"You're not in trouble, are you?"

"No. Everything's gonna be okay, sweetie, I promise. I just, I have somewhere to go. Fuck!"

So Uriah really could trust the person he was built to please. Jane could only wonder who that one person _she_ was built to please was, yet all the same she loosed a burst of heat at the device before her knees, stood, and walked upstairs without a glance back at the body.

###

### About the Author

Anthony DiGiovanni is, as of this writing, a not-so-humble high school student who writes whatever fiction he pleases when he isn't busy butchering songs on the saxophone, crunching numbers, or nerding out in some manner.

### Connect with Anthony Online

Facebook: <http://www.facebook.com/anthonydigiovannitheauthor>

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### Legal Disclaimers

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events described in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, corporations, or government entities is purely coincidental.

Quotes by actual persons are either used with permission or in the public domain. Stock images included in the cover design are used with permission from Freerange Stock, LLC.

### Dedication and Acknowledgments

For the readers who believe humans are a part of nature, too. Not as if that's a license for anything.

This story would have remained little more than a neat yet vague idea if it were not for:

First, my English teachers. You not only kept me from wallowing in the limbo of writers who embarrass themselves with their unbelievable characters – whose actions cannot receive a description that lacks a gerund error, cliche, or inconsistency – but you also gave me constructive criticism, building the sort of confidence in my craft that lets me know I'm not just a hack agonizing over words no one wants to hear.

Second, my parents and brothers, who somehow managed to put up with my bizarre writer's mind and ego as I wrote this, with relative patience and care, no less.

Third, my amazing friends, none of whom told me not to quit my day job if the subject of my fiction came up. That might have something to do with my not actually having a day job at the time.

Fourth, the author of each novel I have ever read, because a writer can learn as much from the duds as from the heartbreaking works of staggering genius. Props to Randy Ingermanson in particular for introducing to me the latter phrase, not to mention his stellar fiction (especially that which he co-authored with the honorable John Olson) and writing advice.

Fifth, the administrators of my grade school's annual Young Authors contest, without which I may never have seriously entertained the notion of following through on my second-grade dream.

Sixth, my beta readers, whose feedback both encouraged and humbled me through the surprisingly fun revision process.

And finally, you, dear reader. Though the odds are that you never personally asked me to write this, it is your presence as a person evidently interested in these words that has sustained my motivation to publish this novel. If you enjoyed this book and take the time to recommend it to fellow readers, or to rate/review it on Goodreads or an appropriate retailer, I sincerely thank you and hope you will find my future works just as engaging.
