Chapter Text
“Help! Somebody – anybody! Help! I need a medic!”
The student threw a rope down to the man trying to climb the barricade. He grabbed it in one hand and scrambled up the makeshift wall of rubbish and furniture, his other arm clamped around the limp body of a large black Labrador Retriever. The student caught his arm as he reached the top of the wall and heaved him over to the relative safety of the University side. “You should be wearing your gas mask!” she told him from behind her own.
“Lost it,” he panted, moving the dog so that it was cradled in his arms.
“Your dog’s wearing its gas mask,” said the student reproachfully. The odd little steel-and-canvas ragdoll on her shoulder folded its arms.
“They haven’t been using gas today anyway,” said the young rebel. He leant closer to peer through the eyepieces of her gas mask. “You! I’ve, I’ve seen you hanging around the field hospitals. You’re a medic?”
“Um, not really. I’m a vet student.”
“A vet! Even better!” He held the Labrador up higher. “Save my dog!”
The student looked at him in stunned silence for a couple of seconds. “The age of humanity is coming to a fiery end, and you want me to save your dog?”
The Labrador whined in pain behind the mask over its head. The animal’s little bulletproof vest had evidently proved not to be so. It did not look promising.
“I… Come down to the ground and I’ll take a look at it,” she said.
“Him,” insisted the rebel.
“All right, him.” She helped the rebel carry his dog down to a sheltered spot behind the barricade and gently removed the bulletproof vest. She sucked in a breath at the dog’s injuries. The poor creature looked to have taken a direct hit from a War Machine’s gun: there was a line of bloody holes punctured all along his flank, crusting the once-glossy black fur with half-dried blood. The ragdoll on her shoulder covered its mouth with one tiny hand.
“Oh. Oh, dear.”
“You can fix him up, right?” pleaded the rebel. “Get the bullets out and stitch him up? I mean, he’s sort of our group’s mascot.” He patted the dog’s ears, which were poking out from beneath his gas mask. “I’ve had him since he was a pup,” he said quietly. The student watched the dog pensively.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“André. André Holzfäller.”
“Nice to meet you, André Holzfäller. I’m Eva Spiegelmann, and this is Septime. She’s an experiment from a couple of years before this war began.” The ragdoll gave André a nod of great condescension – quite an impressive feat for something only a little more than seven inches tall. “Pick your dog up and follow me.” Eva got to her feet and set off at a run towards the main University building. André gathered the dog up in his arms and followed her as fast as he could manage.
Eva, to his surprise, did not take him to any of the medical bays set up in the University. Instead, she led the way to a spacious but incredibly cluttered office, occupied by one old man. She pulled the gas mask off her face.
“Doctor! Dr Shaw, have you got a minute to spare?”
“Too many of them these days,” said Dr Ethan Shaw, running a hand over his balding head. A second ragdoll, slightly taller than Septime but with a somewhat older look to it, turned the page of a large book on the desk. “Ah, thank you, Prime. How can I help, Eva?”
André interrupted before Eva could explain. “You’re a doctor? You can save my dog, then?”
“Save your-? Dear boy, I’m not a medical doctor. I’m afraid English Literature is my field. Eva, why have you brought a wounded animal to my office?”
“Listen.” Eva put a hand on Dr Shaw’s stooped shoulders and steered him to the other side of the room, just far enough to conceal their conversation from André. “Apparently his Labrador’s some sort of rebel mascot. I’ve had a look at him – the dog – and I didn’t want to upset the poor guy but his pet is done for. That animal must have almost a full clip of bullets rattling around in its chest. I can’t do anything for it…”
“So why did you-”
“Anything, that is, with veterinary science.” She pointed meaningfully to Prime and Septime, who were chatting animatedly on the desk, albeit at a frequency that human ears could barely make out. “Do you still have the device we used for them?”
“Well, yes, but… Oh, I don’t know, Eva,” said Dr Shaw. He rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. “It raises all sorts of ethical questions. Does a dog even have a soul to transfer?”
“I dunno! Let’s find out!”
“Eva… It’s a noble endeavour and I really do believe your heart’s in the right place, but have you thought this all the way through? Even if the talisman successfully extracts the… subject’s soul, we don’t have a body to put it into!”
“Oh, come on! The talisman can contain a soul indefinitely as far as we know! If the extraction’s successful, we can build a body to transfer it to!”
Dr Shaw looked over his shoulder at André and the dog. The young rebel was still holding his pet, even though the animal must have weighed at least thirty kilogrammes. The dog was still breathing, but it sounded weaker and more unhealthy with every second that went past. André glanced up and spotted the old man watching him. Dr Shaw sighed.
“What’s your name, son?”
“André.”
“Look. I don’t want to upset you, but your dog is dying. There’s just no way we can repair its body…”
“His body,” said André stubbornly.
“Indeed. As I was saying, there’s no way we can repair his body quickly enough to save his life, but there may be a way of transferring his soul to a new one. Even if it works, he won’t look like the dog you remember any more. I know that the process works for humans – Prime there literally contains half of my soul, improbable as it sounds – and I can’t really think of a good reason why it wouldn’t work for a dog. It’s your choice, André.”
André looked down at the dog in his arms. “He won’t look the same?”
“We can probably build him an artificial body that’s much the same size and shape, but… No, he won’t look the same.”
“But his personality will be the same?”
“I believe so. The more of your soul you transfer, the more of your identity the resulting being takes on. Prime is practically a miniature copy of me. With a complete soul-transfer, I expect he’d be the same dog in a different body.”
André closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “And you’re sure it’ll work?”
“I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance.”
“Do it.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Eva, run and find the Macs – if anyone can build this animal a new body, it’s them. I’ll assemble the device. André, if you could lay your dog down on the desk and remove his mask, I can prepare things properly.”
Eva ran off alone through the University corridors, her gas mask hanging loose around her neck. She knew exactly where she was going: the east wing of the main building, where the School of Mechanics and Engineering students kept their workshops on the ground floor. She reached a familiar door and shoved it open without knocking.
“Heather! Davey! Are you two in here?”
A young woman with shoulder-length ginger hair and a lanky, brown-haired man of about the same age looked up from the dead War Machine with which they were tinkering.
“Aye, we’re here,” said Heather MacLeod. “Why? D’you need us for something?”
“Yes – yes, we do.” Eva explained about the injured dog. “Do you think you two could build something for it?”
“You mean like a new body?” asked David MacDonald. He looked at Heather. “Well…”
“It’s feasible,” said Heather, nodding. “It’ll take time, maybe time we don’t have, but if we can build the little ragdolls, we can build a robot dog.”
“Where are Tierce and Sixte, anyway?” asked Eva. “I don’t see them anywhere.”
“Och, you know them,” said Davey, waving a hand unconcernedly. “They’re off doing their own thing somewhere. They’ll show up if we need them. Right! Eva, d’you still have that Labrador skull?”
“Uh, yeah, it’s in my room.”
“Dinnae take this the wrong way, but you probably won’t need it any more. We can use that for the head – might help some to keep something organic about the design. Go and get it, and we’ll make a start on planning this out.”
André fidgeted with his dog’s collar as he watched Dr Shaw setting up the transfer device.
“You’ve seen the body the Macs have been building, haven’t you?” asked the doctor. “It may be less…less jarring for you if you’ve seen it before we attempt to transfer your dog’s soul into it.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” said André quietly. “It isn’t what I expected, but… If it acts like him, I’ll be happy.”
“I hope this works, then.”
The door to Dr Shaw’s office slammed open and five young people including Eva, Heather and Davey entered the room, all helping to carry the artificial body. It was, as Dr Shaw had promised, much the same size and shape as the original body had been. Heather and Davey had clearly done their best to make it as dog-like as possible on short notice. Its head was made of the skull of a large dog – also a Labrador, Eva told him – but most of it was formed of metal. Curved, forge-shaped plates and a stainless steel ribcage protected the body’s inner workings. Each leg had pulleys and springs to act as muscles and ended in three rounded toes, each toe padded on the base and sporting a blunt claw to help grip the ground. Its flexible segmented spine, protecting the wires that formed the spinal cord, extended beyond its hips into a thick tail.
Even André had to admit that they’d done a good job of the head. Each eye socket held an artificial optic, their iris-shutters firmly shut at the moment, and the two engineers had managed to rig up a voice box of sorts behind its jaws. Wires led back and up into the skull’s brain-case, which appeared to have been sawn open on the underside and re-sealed again using a mixture of staples and glue.
“Right, set it into the transfer device and we’ll see if this works,” said Dr Shaw. The five students lifted the metal body into place so that Dr Shaw could attach the talisman and the transfer cable. André bit his lip as the device began to glow with an eerie green light. They could almost see the soul energy sparking along the transfer cable into the body.
The light faded after almost half a minute.
“What hath science wrought,” said Dr Shaw dramatically when the body stirred.
“He said that when we activated the ragdolls, too,” confided Davey. André wasn’t listening.
The iris-shutters on the skull’s optics whirred open and a golden light flared into life behind them. Each toe twitched one by one and the body’s artificial muscles worked to lift it to its feet. The bony jaws dropped open and the unmistakable sound of a dog panting emerged from the voice box behind them. It looked around the room and stepped down off the table.
“Good heavens, it actually worked,” said Dr Shaw. “I believe this would call for a celebratory drink if we had any!”
André crouched down and held out his hand for the dog to sniff. Sensors inside the skull’s nasal cavity carried the scent to its artificial brain and it sat down in front of him, cocking its head curiously. The metal tail thumped against the floor behind it.
André fastened the leather collar around the metal framework of the dog’s neck and stood up, retreating back to the office door. “C’mon, Shuck,” he said, a touch uncertainly. The dog sprang to its feet and trotted eagerly after him, its metal claws clicking on the floor. A broad grin gradually spread across André’s face and he reached down to scratch the skull behind where its ears had been.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “All of you. I… You don’t have any idea how much this means. I’ll never forget this, I promise.” Someone shouted off in the distance. “I – I have to go. Thank you, thank you all. Heel, boy!”
“What a nice young man,” said Dr Shaw once André and Shuck had gone. “Has anyone seen the ragdolls?”
“They’re all off looking after Octave, as far as I know,” said Davey. “Somewhere upstairs.”
“Of course,” said Dr Shaw quietly. Silence fell as everyone reflected on the empty space next to Eva where Misha Jenkins should have been.
The reflection was cut short by the sudden arrival of Ferenc Kovács, Professor of Archaeology.
“The… The…” The man hunched over, leaning on his knees as he attempted to catch his breath.
“Spit it out, old boy,” said Dr Shaw, patting his colleague’s back.
Professor Kovács straightened up, still breathing hard. “It’s bad,” he said, more resigned than fearful. “It’s extremely bad.”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds as they mulled that over. Professor Kovács had once been in a firefight involving sixteen rebels and five towering War Machines, of which he had been the only human survivor, and had later referred to the incident as ‘somewhat unfortunate’.
“Define ‘bad’,” said Heather slowly.
Kovács looked around at them all and took a deep breath.
“The University is surrounded. The barricades have fallen. The War Machines are coming.”