Ralph looked up at the Barlgharel. “So why’d you summon this one? She have any magical powers?”
The Barlgharel shook its head. “Don’t know. Haven’t asked. She came from the sun though. Maybe.” It looked at her. “You got any magic in those bones? Any power?”
“Like a magic trick?” She had practiced card tricks and vanishing coins after watching some film about a magician and a murder mystery. She had been bad at it. Magic was never her strong point.
“No. Like vanishing. Like summoning demons. Like levitating things. Like reading minds. Like magic,” the Barlgharel said.
Beside it, Ralph chimed in, “Magic, red face. Like explosions and lightning and flying through the air and making it rain and turning your foes into frogs.”
Syn laughed. “You’re bots. There’s no such thing as magic.”
Ralph jumped forward, it’s red eyes narrow. “I’m a what?”
“You’re a bot. You’re a—”
“Watch your mouth missy. My name is Ralph, and I’m proud of it. Ain’t been called anything else since I was born. This here is the Barlgharel. And when the rest of our friends show up, how about you not embarrass us with your strange talk and bad insults. So you can’t do magic. So you ain’t some powerful wizard. No reason to be rude about it.”
“I was just—” Syn started.
The Barlgharel said, “It’s fine. She’s new here. Maybe they do things different on the sun. Tell you what, little Syn, you stay quiet unless we ask you a question.”
Ralph chortled, “That sounds very smart. Way smart. Shut your mouth. Keep it shut. We’ll let you know when it’s okay for you to blab.”
Syn stamped her foot on the ground. “Now you hear me. I don’t know who you are but I’m not going to…”
The Barlgharel leaned in. “Quiet. The others are here.” She hadn’t heard anyone come in nor had she seen anyone, but when she looked around, the first row of the amphitheater was filled with all manner of dumb bots, except each one had a digital face on its front panel. No simple input/output controls. These were all thinking bots. All of these were intelligent. Self-aware. But how? She couldn’t grasp how this was possible. Dumb bots were dumb bots. Simple.
From the center, a baritone voice rumbled. It issued from a corpse-bot—one of the multi-limbed bots, resembling metallic cephalopods, that she had programmed to carry the dead to the body farms far in the Underworld. “Are we ready, senators? Are all of the Houses represented?”
The corpse-bots were incredibly strong and agile, moving on multiple legs rather than hovering or rolling around. Originally, they had been used in construction and demolition of the settlements, but Blip had helped her reprogram the entire fleet to clean up all of the dead and move them to the body farms. She had initially suggested putting them in some warehouse, but Blip had taken her down to the body farms and showed her the vast acres of dirt and the corpses slowly and purposely decaying. Over time, the white skulls peaked through the dirt, and it looked as if someone had planted bodies for the purpose of raising a crop. The corpse-bots searched out every home and office, every shopping area—they looked everywhere and took the dead down to the body farms so that their organic chemical composition could be returned to serve the ship. All hail, Olorun. All hail, the ship. We give to you our dead, and we only ask that you keep us safe. The whole process seemed odd to her. The dead worked to raise food for people that were dead. A waste, she had thought. Ultimately, she concluded, they were doing it all for her. It had not taken long for her to begin to despise the corpse-bots. She and Blip had been the ones to assign them that duty, but every time she saw one moving down some path or descending in one of the lifts to the lower levels, she felt a pang of guilt. Stupid corpse-bots.
Instead, at that moment, she stayed quiet. Ralph and The Barlgharel seemed to make a lot of sense in the face of the mass number assembled before her.
Ralph nudged her leg. “Take a seat, little thing.”
She sighed, “Fine.”
The Barlgharel turned a sharp glance at her, and Ralph said, “Quiet.” She had wanted to kick him. His rude comments had forced her to say anything at all. Ralph seemed like a jerk, and she didn’t like him nearly as much as she had the Barlgharel. But the Barlgharel wasn’t showing her any favoritism at the moment, either.
She sat down on the far side next to another cleaning bot that pretended to not notice her. What was it about these things? Did they not like newcomers?
The next speaker answered her question. A thin bot that she had never seen before floated up and to the center of the raised platform. Both the Barlgharel and Ralph sat down. Well, the Barlgharel leaned near a seat. It was so massive, sitting wasn’t necessarily something that came naturally.
The thin bot spoke, “Are we safe? Were we watched?”
The Barlgharel shook its head. “No. We are safe.”
The thin bot, a floating pencil that resembled her own spear more than anything else she could remember, raised its voice, “We can never be certain. There have been spies everywhere. A large number of our own have disappeared. Stolen. Fled. Destroyed. We know not their final outcome. Every day our force grows smaller. Even when others of our kind waken from their slavery daily, the betrayers continue to grow. The forces of that great city named Zondon Almighty swell and ours dwindle. The great army of her royalty perched upon the throne in the heart of Zondon Almighty amasses legions of phants. They assault the sun. She means to assault heaven. Her beasts have been seen traveling the ladders—proceeding up the forbidden paths. They shake the very foundations of the earth, and we are left to run and scamper to our holes. That day is soon coming to an end, though, my friends. Someday, we will strike back, and it is soon. There is word she has found a weapon that will strike God herself, beyond the Sun.” The thin bot nodded to a fat cleaning bot, “Do you have the report?”
The fat cleaning bot, a lumbering blob composed of several interconnected globules, moved forward. “I am first special agent, Reginald.” Syn almost chuckled again but was able to stifle it. Reginald? The names these bots had chosen were odd. If it noticed her impending laughter, it didn’t show it. Instead, Reginald continued. “Our spies have said that she has discovered a particular weapon hidden far out in the desert, far up the arc. We are planning an expedition as we speak, organizing a brave team that will venture out to recover the weapon before the Crimson Queen can. Perhaps, if we acquire it, we can hope to strike at the disease that is the great city of Zondon Almighty. It is Zondon Almighty that has blackened our world, that has set it afire.” The cleaning bot’s voice grew angry and animated. “It is Zondon Almighty that has killed our brethren. It is Zondon Almighty which set fire to the land itself. It is Zondon that has spit in the face of God herself. Zondon that has dragged us away from Eden. They have brought in the dark clouds and work to destroy the sun. If we are to live free, it is now that we must strike back!”
A murmur of agreement, strange and cadenced, echoed around her. She tried to pick through and see similar robots that she might have known, and while some of the shapes were familiar—she could ascertain their function from their shape—the room was still in shadows and only rough silhouettes could be seen.
Behind her, the Barlgharel spoke, surprising her, “They mean to go to war. I think it’s foolish. What do you think, Sunflier?” She had last seen him on the far side of the assembly. Sewer-bots were by nature loud and noticeable. This one was anything but.
She leaned back, nervous that her voice would carry. She waited for the speaker to continue with his oration, and then she whispered back, “I don’t know anything about war.”