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"Little robot."
G2 is afraid, but he has been afraid since the moment of his creation. Afraid and lonely and desperate. This is nothing new. He holds still, silent, remembering the rocks raining on him. And the music. He needs to make the music again, and then perhaps Grey will want to come to him, but he doesn't know where his leaf is. He keeps his vision turned off, so as not to see more rocks.
"Little robot," the voice repeats. The voice isn't actually registering on his sound sensors. It feels like it comes from his circuits, as if he is speaking himself. "You were not what I was trying to catch. Where is the robot Grey? I calculated his destruction."
"I saved him." G2 can feel pride, too, as well as the dark panicky empty emotions that choke his circuits. His shoulders straighten a little..
"A pity. His consciousness would have been useful to me; a most unusual and almost perfect robot. But you may also repay study."
"I'm not useful." He can remember his failure, and he curls up in distress. "Not… not perfect."
"Perhaps your body was faulty. That is no longer a concern. Your consciousness, too, may help me. You, too, seem to be unusual for a robot." The voice doesn't laugh, but there's a feeling of it. "Perhaps I will grant you three wishes in return. Or maybe not three. Maybe ten, maybe none. Tell me what you want more than anything, little robot?"
G2 tries to find the words. To be not afraid. Not alone. To feel again like he felt when Grey gave him his power. To be useful and wanted. To make music again. Too many things, too complicated to express. He hugs his knees.
And then his few, painful memories are opened, playing before him like his mind is a screen. He doesn't want to relive them, but whoever is controlling his brain is merciless. Finally is turned up the one bright, shining one: the unexpected kindness from Grey, the only kindness he had ever experienced.
"Interesting. A compassionate robot."
G2 tries to agree, eagerly, but then the rejections play over, his desperation, his despair. The girl with the white skin and black hair, who makes music that G2 could never make.
"This is valuable. Tell me a wish, little yellow robot."
It comes without hesitation this time.
"I want to bring Maria to Grey."
The sand is gritty under Grey's sensors, the pounding of the waves loud on his receptors. He supposes he should move; a few grains of sand aren't a problem, but if too much gets into his joints and circuits, they could slow him down. It's too tempting to ignore minor risks, and he tries not to show vulnerability as a warrior, but he is already weakened, the constant ache of badly fused wires where his arm was torn off and clumsily repaired. He hadn't dare entrust himself to Tran or Radiguet for repairs, and he can't afford any more errors. A small slow-down could be the difference between life and death, or the difference between him being able to save Maria or not.
But Grey has somehow forgotten that it is too late to save Maria. Once he realises, he can't hold the slow trickle of memories back, like acid into his circuits, dissolving them. Maria is dead, and Grey is destroyed. The memories come back. Black Condor had lit Grey's cigar, and he'd breathed the smoke in, but this time Grey's body cannot process the chemicals and turn them into fuel. This time, his systems will stop working, face his final failure, and reach oblivion. He will fade into unconsciousness soon enough, the blank where his destroyed arm, the arm that had turned against him in the end, consuming all of him.
Life is win or lose, no ties, and Grey has lost everything. There's a certain comfort in the thought.
He can't join Maria. He knows some humans believe there is a fate after death for them, whether it be another world or reincarnation. Grey would hope it was true for her and that she faced happiness and not hell, if he was capable of hope, but for robots there is only the silence before creation. And perhaps recycling, he thinks, and is surprised at the flicker of cold anger that the thought of Tranza using his components to make a new robot. He had thought all emotions had vanished into the ether with Maria, all except the longing for oblivion.
Soon, now. Soon there will only be a heap of junk on the beach, and the pain will stop. Love in war invites death. He can't even find it a pity that he proved himself right, because without Maria, this feels like a fitting and honourable end. He will die here on this beach, smoking his final cigar, and hope that whatever fate existed will protect his remains from Tranza, and leave Grey in peace.
He should not be lying on a beach. The realisation slides into Grey's mind. And there is no cigar in his mouth.
Grey's vision flickers back on, and he stares up at the sky, then turns his head to look at the sea, grey and hopeless as his name. Of course, this was where he was, where Maria had died in his arms. I don't want to die. He had held her, and none of her thoughts had been for him.
He shouldn't be here. Perhaps his dying circuits are creating hallucinations. Perhaps Black Condor, who had been puzzlingly sad at having defeated him, had dragged him here, thinking he would want to pass from existence where his robotic tears had shattered Maria's form into the ether. Stupid human. He doesn't want to remember Maria weakened, regretful, fragile in his arms. He wants to die remembering Maria proud and ambitious, her whip snapping out like a dart, or with music rising from her fingers, full of darkness and longing. He wants his last moments to replay the memory of her burning recognition when he had found her fighting Red Hawk, the moment when he had thought, just for a moment, she had loved him. The moments before he had lost the final dice roll.
There is only tragedy and loss here.
The last moments stretch on, and on, and he doesn't reach oblivion. The wind doesn't fade; the sea and the clouds don't change colour.
The clouds are very distant. Was the sky on Earth so far away? Other planets he had helped conquer had atmospheres that hung low like a cloak, or stretched out further into space than this entire galaxy's orbit. But the Earth atmosphere should be dissipating into outer space at around a hundred kilometres. Idly, for lack of anything else to do while waiting to die, Grey begins to calculate how high these clouds are. At least… 873.96 kilometres. That can't be right. His sensors must be disintegrating. When he thinks about it, he can't feel pain in his arm, or in the place in his chest his circuits were reintroduced. Perhaps the systems are no longer relaying information properly.
Something hurts, though. Something is a deep unbearable ache, like his circuits are overheating.
"Welcome, Grey. Your arrival has been long anticipated. I apologise for the delay. I have been busy with my other guests." The voice comes from within his own positronic brain, he can recognise that, but is not his own being. His fists clench with anger at the violation.
His fists. He has two fists. But Black Condor had picked up Grey's arm and shot him with it. Grey stares at his restored hands, and realises he no longer hurts where his circuit was patched back in. He feels whole and newly made.
"Who is Maria? The other couldn't tell me."
"None of your business, whoever you are." But the images come back despite himself, as if the voice is carefully pulling data cards to the front of his positronic brain and playing recordings, using his mind as some kind of screen to watch his own life. He would scream in fury and resist, if he could, but he is motionless as the memories play.
Grey's fingers are built for crushing and throttling, not delicacy, but his control is complete, his movements tiny and infinitesmial, as he leans the cards towards each other. It takes absolute precision; let them try to fall together too sloppily and their edges won't meet and cling precisely. It might look good enough, but if the exact edges aren't touching in the right hairline of contact, they will eventually slide off each other's protected glossy surfaces, bringing the whole edifice down.
"This is a boring game, Grey." Tran hovers petulantly by his shoulder. "What's the point in playing by yourself?"
He thinks: but the cards aren't by themselves. They are perfectly balanced and barely, just barely connecting. Instead, he flings out his arms and the castle crashes down, the cards flying under their own weight. What does he care if they rest against each other, supporting each other, or lie scattered on the ground?
Tran laughs, high and pleased, and Grey can't tell if it's pleasure at the distraction or mockery at himself, a robot playing human children's games the same we he does. Grey gets up to stride angrily away, and as he does, he sees the new Vyram High Official watching him. She looks away, face as smooth and expressionless as any robot, but he can't escape the impression that there was something in her gaze that he doesn't understand, something that makes his circuits fail to spark properly for a moment. Something that doesn't make sense from a Vyram.
What was she thinking?
He doesn't like mysteries. He supposes he will have to watch his back with Maria, until he has the key to the mystery of her. She might cause problems for him later on.
Radiguet finds Maria beautiful, that is evident, but Grey supposes that as a robot he himself lacks aesthetic senses. He doesn't care how long and slim her legs are, or how satiny her long, black hair seems. In a way she is almost tediously simple to decode; ambitious, power-hungry, resentful. All to be expected, and used as necessary. Tedious.
But there is something else he puzzles over. The set of her lips is hard, but the lips themselves are soft, and tremble sometimes, like a petal in the breeze. Her loud laughter is hard as steel, sharpened to a shining edge of something he can recognise as hysteria, and all the more dangerous for being brittle. Her voice is often harsh and angry, never gentle, but sometimes it seems to him like some fragile sea creature covered in poisonous spines to cover the soft flesh inside.
The thought should disgust him, the vulnerability of organic creatures, their impractical lack of inherent armor. In Maria, he does not. He finds it beautiful, and is shocked at the word. He might play at being human, but the cigars won't give him dopamine, the brandy tastes of nothing and is merely a source of fuel. He doesn't understand, himself, why he puts ice in.
Radiguet and Tran also have hard bits and soft bits, but it does not affect him that their lips are supple over hard teeth, their limbs tender over supporting skeletons. Grey does not understand why this should be. Perhaps it is this odd feeling he gets around Maria, as if there is a vast, echoing chasm in the pupils of her too-delicate, too vulnerable eyes.
He resolves to pay more attention to studying her, and assess if she is a threat. He is suspicious of the way she plays piano, of the strange way it tugs at him. He learned to play the notes perfectly, but it doesn't feel the same. Perhaps, if he listens more, he will learn to understand it.
Not letting her die is an entirely rational decision. Even if it happens more than once. Even if he puts himself at risk. He needs to hear her music, after all.
When his circuit is lost, it feels like having more than a physical part of himself ripped off. He bleeds oil, and feels like, if he had a heart, it would be bleeding. He struggles to remain cool and controlled. He can do this. Calculate the odds. Win the points back.
Maria stands by his side. Maria is distressed when he drips oil. She doesn't want to lose him, she doesn't like to see him in pain. And he won't die. She needs him. He doesn't fool himself about the reason she is upset: she is ambitious and powerful, and if Grey is too weakened, she will have no use for him at all.
She's not a human like you.
He doesn't want to remember this.
He tries to pull his mind away, to later memories, happier ones. A few hours on, Maria alive and fighting, her face fierce with joy at the sight of him. Her voice had been harsh with concern for him. He had tried to reject her support, much as every circuit in his brain screamed for it, tried to prove he was strong, but he had stumbled and, instead of taking advantage of his weakness, she had supported him. Saving him. In that moment he had fooled himself he was loved—
"What was the music when you were with Maria? Why is it different when it comes from her than when it comes from the little robot?"
Darkness lies that way. He doesn't want to think of it. But his mind is dragged back, the accusing sound of little G2 playing on the leaf… The scream and the explosion. It had been a relief, he had told himself. He had no use for a helpless robot, just like Maria would have no use for him if he wasn't strong enough to protect her. Being needed is a burden, and he has no time spare to support someone too weak to support themselves.
"Then why?" The image of Maria supporting his weight and helping him escape is there again, turning over and over, tumbling in the screen of his mind, and around it, like afterimages, every time he bore her in his arms, every time he supported her.
"We were both strong. It was better to combine forces."
"You betrayed your side to try and save her. And you wept for her." The memories fast forward suddenly to the worst place, and now he is standing in the sea as he did then reflecting his memory. Standing alone, no Maria in his arms. "How was that? That's very unique. Robots aren't built to weep. That blue energy was not salt and water. And yet… it was tears."
"I do not know why my tears flowed. They had to find a way."
Maria is in his arms, and then vanishing, over and over again. Grey thrashes against the memory of it, and with strange mercy, it stops.
"No need to make such a silly fuss, Grey. It's only a memory. I'll let you watch this instead, and then maybe I'll grant you a wish. If I'm in the mood. I can be moved by tears, you know. Or answers to my questions. Why did you hate the little robot?"
Just like that, G2 is begging in front of him, over and over and over, his need, his loneliness, his desperation to be wanted, blending into the sense of his own need for Maria to want him, and it's like being burned in hell for all of eternity.
Grey begins to weep again, shining blue spilling and rising up, sparkling, to vanish in the sky.
-—
"Where am I?"
"Hello, Maria."
There is sand crunching under her feet. She isn't wearing her armour, but she can't quite see what she is wearing instead. The sky is wrong.
"I think my name is Rie," she says, and the words feel like a lie in her mouth. She shakes her head, trying to clear the unpleasant feeling
"I'm afraid Rie is dead. Gone on to her next life, or an afterlife, or gone among the stars. I'm afraid I don't know what happens to humans. My job is to study artificial personalities, and assess them to see if they can be useful. Nothing too unpleasant, just a few questions."
"Useful in what way?" There's no answer, and she feels stupid. She doesn't like feeling stupid. "My personality is a false one, isn't it? If I'm not Rie, what am I?"
"An anomaly. A lie. A consciousness without a soul. A recording uploaded. A wish. What is left when the heart and soul of of a human woman is drained away, and the being that called herself Maria is left."
"That makes no sense." The anger curls in Maria's heart like her own whip. "I need to get back to my mission."
"You have no mission. You failed. Or Rie won. Bit of a Phyrric victory, as the people of Earth say."
"So I'm Maria." She laughs at the clouds far above. "A lie, not a person. I suppose I may as well be a robot." There's a prickle at her heart when she says that, as if she's being somehow disloyal to Grey. She can't dent she thought of him as a person, loyal and always there for her. She'd chided herself as a fool for thinking of programming as a person, but in the end, hadn't she been right?
"Perhaps you are the parts of Rie she couldn't face. Did Rie have no ambition, no anger, no desire to be powerful? Didn't she ever wish she could struggle against all the expectations on her to be good, to put others first?"
"How am I supposed to remember?" She screams it into the wind, but it isn't whipped away. It circles her, as if mocking.
"Is asking that your wish?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do you really want, Maria?"
And she remembers. Everything, all at once, like a display of televisions in a shop window, all turned to a different channel, only the window is her own mind. The memories are a cacophony of light and sound, and Maria is sobs and screams anger at them. She sees herself humiliated, over and over. Every fight lost. Never strong enough, never clever enough, failing over and over, knowing that everyone around her has their knives out, not daring to show any weakness…
Grey had lifted her in his arms. Shielded her with his body. The memories return to him, over and over, and she's not screaming anymore. His face was still, but she felt like she could read expression in it sometimes, and in the movements of his body. As if he had… loved her…
"Robots are not people. They can't love," she tells the ocean. "They can't."
"That's going to be unfortunate for you then, isn't it, Maria?"
She looks down and sees her own arms, shining hard and white under the faraway sun, and she falls to her knees.
"There's nothing to be scared about. You wished to be strong, and now you're a robot. Powerful and perfect. Do you love Grey?" The question comes without any pause, as if the subject had not even been changed.
"Love." Maria doesn't move from where she is doubled over on the sand. "Robots can't love. How could I love?"
"You don't think he loved you?"
She's silent. She wants to say yes. Knows it's important. It won't come out. She can't believe it, not for who she was, or for who she is now. But Grey has seen the worst of her, and he never flinched away.
"I don't suppose it matters anyway. He was destroyed by a single human," the voice says casually.
"I don't believe you! He was stronger than any human." But she believes it, she thinks, because she's crying. Not tears. There's white light flowing from her eyes. It rises and floats, and she lets it happen. There's no one to see or care, after all, except the voice in a positronic brain.
"He gave up. He grieved for you so much he sought his own destruction." And she watches it, watches it behind her own… whatever she has instead of eyes.
She cries for herself, for Rie, and for Grey. Most of all for Grey, who had loved her unconditionally.
"I think I will grant you a wish. If I like what you ask for, at least. What do you want?"
It comes from her heart, twisting. "Another chance. For me and for Grey."
"Granted." There's a smile behind the voice, cool but not hostile. "I might even throw in a bonus chance."
"Do you love Grey?"
It's the voice again. G2 uncurls and sits up. The answer comes without hesitation. "Yes. Grey…" The tears flow out of his eyes, in a stream of yellow light. "I want to bring Maria to Grey," he says. "Even if it doesn't take me with him."
"Well. Robots who can love. We shall see."
"Can you answer my question now? Why did you hate the little robot, and leave him to his doom?"
Grey raises his head. he had lowered it as if he could look away from the terrible images and sounds, of the begging robot, of Maria dying. As if he could look away from his own mind. "I hated him because he was too much like me. Because he wanted to be loved, and was just a robot, and no one would ever care for him. Or for me." The words are dragged out of him, as if something else controlled his vocal unit, because he would certainly not say anything so humiliating.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. Tell me your wish."
"I want another chance. I want not to fail them. I want…" He still won't voice his need for love. Pathetic, for a robot and a warrior. "Company." He thought perhaps he should ask for Maria, but after all, Maria was not a thing to ask for, but an individual who could choose. A woman of her pride would never be a prize. That was where Radiguet had gone wrong, and whatever Grey's imperfections, he wouldn't stoop to that one. But he wants Maria by his side, oh, how he wants her.
"Granted. Thank you for your assistance. You've all been very helpful."
"What do you mean, we all?"
"Grey!" The voice interrupting him is a voice from his nightmares, a voice that means pain and guilt and regret. He doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to look up and see the small yellow form of a robot, that he had healed only to betray. But, somehow, he lifts his head.
"You, too, are here," he says coldly. The asymmetrical eyes flicker with light like they are flinching, and it feels like they have pierced Grey, that all his regret and pain flood out from the hole G2 has made. "I'm sorry," he says at last. He falls to his knees and holds out his arms. He doesn't think he has ever apologised for anything before. "I'm sorry."
"Grey!" G2 comes forward into his arms, and he folds them around him. He can fill the circuits racing in the small form, and he feels in a strange way as if he is hugging himself, accepting his own unrobotic need for love and caring. He can't fix his own pain and loss, he thinks, but he can let himself be needed, he can fix some of the pain in this fellow robot.
He is so caught up in the thought that when G2 says "I brought you Maria! Maria!" it takes a moment for him to realise what has been said.
It makes no sense. Maria is dead. Maria was dead, in a way, even before the human woman Rie died. But there is a figure on the beach, crouched. For a moment Grey thinks he sees a human woman, bent over, gasping for desperate breath. But then she straightens, and her face is smooth and hard and white. The lips are carved, and will never tremble in fury or confusion. The eyes are sheathed in hard plastic, and do not have pupils to expand or contract with light or emotion.
But the fingers are long and graceful, and could coax music from a row of keys. He rises to his feet, arms dropping from around G2.
"Grey." A robot's face can't light up at the sight of him, not like his cherished memories, but there is something in its timbre that gives him the same inexplicable rush of joy and gratitude. "What do you think of me now?"
There is nothing soft about her now, no fragile curve of cheek or delicate whorl of ear, no long tail of silky hair. But inside, he thinks suddenly, are wires and circuits. Intricate, delicate, easy to rip. Vulnerable still.
"You are beautiful," he says. It sounds flat, mechanical, but there is a tremor of the light in her visual display, and he thinks of the way her silk-thin human eyelids would tremble with emotion. This is Maria's human heart. Not an organ of blood and flesh and tubes, but a heart that yearns and doubts and craves, that wants power and intimacy and meaning. "Maria."
She comes forward, and it's too easy, humanly easy, to wrap his arms around her and feels hers around his neck. She doesn't flinch away from the cold of his body now.
"You are so loyal," Maria says, her electronic voice cracking. "You always reached out your hand to me, and shielded me with your body. And all you would ask in return is my music. You could make music yourself."
"It did not sound like music that came from you."
"I liked it better than mine," she says, and he wonders if this is what happiness feels like. "I want to hear it again. Forever." She pulls back, and the white visor of her viewscreen is more beautiful than even her brown eyes had been, radiating with light. "It doesn't matter who Rie chose. Maria chooses you."
Sometimes he had imagined being human, kissing her. But this, feeling the electricity and power stream through her, the pulses of energy in her being, is more beautiful, more intense than anything he thinks any human could feel. There is so much to say, and all that comes out is Maria, Maria, as the emptiness is filled with light. He loves her.
"What do we do now?" Maria asks, and it takes Grey a moment to realise she is not addressing him, but talking to a voice in her own head. Of course.
The voice doesn't answer. They wait, wary for the return. His sensors tell him hours have passed, although the sky and light remain unchanged. Grey would wait forever with Maria in his arms, G2 sitting staring happily out to sea. Their minds have nothing in them but themselves.
"It seems we have been abandoned," Maria says at last. "We don't even know why we were revived. It said it was going to study us, but I assumed it needed fighters. It may come back."
"We were created to fight, all of us. You are strong and powerful yet your heart and mind are intact," Grey tells her. "You were a great fighter before, but now you have no limits." It is a very long speech for him.
"Perhaps I'm sick of fighting for others." He can't see red lips curl in disdain, but he doesn't need to. He knows her voice, her moods. "I'm tired of killing humans. Perhaps I want to be strong on my own terms. Our own terms. The two of us."
"The three of us," he says, surprising himself despite his wish. He has Maria at last. What does he need with G2? But he says it anyway.
"Grey!" G2 quavers, as if he can't quite believe it. "You will take me with you? Grey and Maria and G2?"
The white robot's laugh is still Maria's laugh, wild and edged with the tinkle of glass, but Grey thinks the edge of hysteria, of desperate loss, is gone. "Am I a mother now at last? Surely not."
"I want to be your comrade! I'm very strong too, now. Look." It moves without stumbling, lifts and throws a boulder three times its own size.
"Perhaps, if necessary, we can turn our new strength against our saviors," Grey muses, and Maria laughs again.
"I don't want to be a pawn in anyone else's struggle," she agrees.
"Perhaps they want to help us!" G2 offers, eagerly.
"Perhaps they want us to form a robot orchestra," Grey says, but his sarcasm is dulled by this new feeling of happiness.
"I don't care. Let's just go," Maria says. "Just the three of us. If they want us, they can chase."
Her long robotic fingers suddenly catch their hands on each side, and they run. After a while their steps fail to hit the ground, and they twist, a white door in space opening up before them. Maria reaches it first, but somehow, defying logic, they fall through it together.
"I still don't understand the point of this experiment." The male scientist leans on the roboticist's desk, and she pushes him away, irritated. "If you were recruiting them for fighters and installing them in strong bodies, perhaps. But they failed against Jetman. Why would we want failures to help our invasion of Earth?"
"You can learn even from failure," the roboticist says.
"But why all the talking about their emotions?"
"Anomalies are interesting. I wanted Grey because he was transcending robot. behaviour, smoking and drinking, but there's more to it than that. Robots who love and care about each other. A personality that develops individually from the original personality of the brain. There are possibilities there."
"I don't see how that helps us in war."
"I don't suppose you do." Her tone makes it clear that she is not going to discuss it longer.
"And why let them go, once you had whatever you wanted?"
"Merely a whim. I thought it would be amusing, granting robot wishes. And I owed them."
The scientist leaves, clearly dismissing her as a sentimental idiot, wasting her time on personal projects. Smug bastard. He has no idea of the true value of what she has gained.
The roboticist reaches out and opens a box. Inside lie three vials, glowing blue and yellow and white. Things that should not exist: the tears of robots. She doesn't know yet how she will use them, but she knows she will find a way. It's only a matter of enough analysis.
"Run far, my robot friends," she says under her breath. "I'll avenge you against Earth."
They can't run forever, Grey knows. One day, they will have to turn and find a place in space to wait and find a home, and perhaps they will have to fight. Either way, it will be together. His tears sparkle like blue plasma as they run, but they feel like joy.
They can hear music ahead, and it twists and turns like a harmony in three parts.
end