As he lay in the barracks, the dead and the dying all around him, stinking equally of filth and corrupted flesh, he knew that all normal fear had been driven completely out of him. He would attempt to stay alive, although death had lost its meaning. He was frequently in pain, but pain was what he expected. What he did fear were the Muselmänner, the soulless ones who ate very little, who reacted to nothing, doomed to selection, and yet still they walked, or shambled, most often at a snail’s pace, always in the way, always underfoot. Not that he feared the Muselmänner themselves—they were pitiful, the best they could do was annoy and enrage. He abused them, as did many others. If one of them fell he had no embarrassment about stepping on his back. There had once been one in front of the barracks for days—they’d used him as a stepping stone, their feet pushing him further into the mud until he was like some piece of pavement.
But to become a Muselmänner, to transform into one of those silent, subhuman creatures, that was a terrifying possibility.
The soldiers gave the Muselmänner the hardest work to do, even though they were the weakest—a pack of five of them pushing a wagon, rolling a barrel. They did it slowly, and some would fall over dead in the process, but that didn’t matter—they were supposed to die, this day or the next one. Often when they were beaten they appeared to feel no pain—they were a waste of brutality. Although sometimes they were good for a little cruel fun. You could make them do any shameful thing. A few managed to show them kindness—there were always a few saints around, giving up their own food, their own protection, for those who could not be saved. A waste of time, but they became like their pets.
Some said the Muselmänner were too empty to suffer—he didn’t know about that. But he had his own miseries to worry about. He needed to forget about them.
In the beginning the Muselmänner ate anything—they’d eat shoe leather if there was nothing else. Toward the end, however, many of them couldn’t eat anything, and yet they shuffled around without the strength to lift their feet. The weakest of the bunch had to bend down and use their hands to move their legs.
He sometimes spent a great deal of time trying to avoid them—they stank worse than anything he had ever encountered. Sometimes the other prisoners would push them out of the barracks so they had to sleep outside. He hated the way they got in the way all the time, the way they stared, the message they sent that all was lost.
It occurred to Danielbot that he himself hadn’t eaten in days—of course he didn’t need to. The so called protein paste had been largely for lubrication and conditioning purposes. What ill effects he might suffer without it, he had no idea. But the lack of power in the batteries—that was another—if he lost enough power a Muselmänn might be his fate.
He had never heard the term prisoner when everyone had been disguised and the guards had been roaches and unspeaking. They had called each other “residents.” Now everyone used the word “prisoner.”
Sometimes the punishments became an excuse to experiment with the bots’ physical limits. Once a bot was down guards would surround the figure and apply electrical charges to various parts and observe which areas caused the most visible distress.
Witnessing this, Danielbot tried to go back and find the holocaust survivor inside himself, the one who had gone through so much and come out the other side. A meaning had to be found.
A vision of the future sometimes helped you survive.
With his family present inside him, he could feel genuine joy for a few moments at a time.
Despite a universe of pain it was possible for spiritual life to deepen.
A LARGE NUMBER of guards left during the next few days. He didn’t see them go, but every morning when he woke up there were fewer of them. There also appeared to be fewer bots; Danielbot assumed they’d simply gone to the edge of the roof in the middle of the night and walked off. His own temptation to do so was outweighed by his need to see how the story ended.
The remaining guards no longer patrolled the roof perimeter. Perhaps they no longer had orders to prevent suicides. Perhaps it wasn’t even considered suicide. Can an appliance kill itself?
He thought it odd that he still had sleep cycles. He doubted he needed them, unless sleep promoted sanity even in an artificial intelligence, and he still very much believed he was capable of losing his mind.
He could not explain his mental processing outside the context of Daniel. The best explanation his available mental tools could come up with was that he was a kind of dream of Daniel, a kind of nightmare. Was he the dreamer, or was it someone else? The troubling thing was that he was troubled at all.
Among the remaining guards the abusive treatment of the prisoners increased. There was no disciplinary reason for the abuse—the bots did not resist. Falstaff tried once or twice to stop the abuse and was beaten down for his trouble.
His battery life was rapidly coming to an end, but he saw nothing he could do about that. And perhaps he shouldn’t bother, as he was a mere footnote in someone else’s life.
“You,” he said to Falstaff. “You came out of a womb. You had a family. You have a complete history. Your memories are your own and not someone else’s. You should leave here while you still can.”
“I’m going to hang on a bit longer. Who knows, maybe a helicopter will come and take us all out of here.” Falstaff avoided eye contact.
“They won’t take the bots, Falstaff. We’re simply excess equipment.”
“Falstaff?” He looked amused. “From Shakespeare?”
“When I first came here I didn’t want to become too attached to anyone. I’d lost… Daniel had lost, enough people. I gave each of you new names, arbitrary names. Bogart, Lenin, Gandhi, Falstaff. Daniel enjoyed Shakespeare, particularly the histories.”
“You’re far more than a recording. You came up with those names on your own. These new memories are yours alone.”
“The family was his. Gordon was his. If my only life is what I’ve experienced here, I’d rather not exist.
“Really, you should leave, John. Things will not end well here.”
“Then come with me.”
Danielbot could see the God of Mayhem wrapping his face in colorful rags, rising to his feet and spreading his arms. “No—look at us, think of what people would do to us. We would be less safe out among your kind.”
“If you change your mind, just come. I’ll find some way to help you. But before I leave—maybe there’s enough power for me to find out if Daniel ever got on that plane.”
“No. I don’t think so—leave it be. It isn’t always best to know.”
That afternoon Danielbot became aware of crowd activity near one end of the roof, bots gathered into a wall, obscuring something on the other side, a flash of fast-moving metal and a mewling sound, like that of a failing engine or an animal in extremis. Danielbot maneuvered through the figures until he could get a better look: a bot struggling frantically, a chain attached from its frame to a large rusty ring embedded in the roof. Another bot was slapping him on the head, kicking him, then dodging out of his grasp at the last moment.
The chained bot snapped its teeth and shookits head.“Henry?”
The werewolfbot stopped, stared at him, then started shaking its head again. Danielbot studied the one who had been taunting him—that bot took one glance at him, turned his back and disappeared into the crowd. The werewolfbot made a high-pitched screeching sound. The chain was attached just below the neck joint. The bot kept running in circles, the chain stretched tightly to the ring. With each revolution he came perilously close to the edge of the roof. If he went off the edge he would hang himself.